hood; there was only a thin sharp gleam of face out of it, like
a very lance of intelligence. Margaret held out the stiff white
corner of a letter from the folds of her shawl. "He sent it," she
said to Madelon, who came to the door.

Madelon opened the letter and read it. "I can't come," she said,
shortly. "I'm busy. Tell him he must write what he wants to tell me."

Margaret Bean's eyes were sharp as steel points. She had not known
what was in the letter. "Hey?" said she, pretending that she had not
heard, in order to make Madelon repeat and perhaps reveal more.

"I can't come," said Madelon. "He can write what he wants to tell
me."

Suddenly a great red flush spread over her pale face and her neck.
She lowered her eyes before the other woman as if in utter
degradation of shame, and shrank back into the house and closed the
door in Margaret Bean's face.

Margaret Bean stood for a moment, a silent, shapeless figure in the
cold air. "Pretty actions, I call it," said she then, quite loudly,
and went out of the yard with a curious tilting motion on slender
ankles, as of a balancing bale of wool.

Madelon slipped her letter into her pocket as she entered the
kitchen. Her father and all her brothers were there. It was shortly
after breakfast, and they had not yet gone out.

"Who was it at the door?" her father asked. He sat by the fire in his
great boots.

"Margaret Bean."

"What did she want?"

"Lot Gordon sent for me to come over there."

"What for?"

"He wanted--to--tell me something."

"You ain't going a step. I can tell ye that."

"I--told her I couldn't go," said Madelon. Her voice was almost
breathless, and still that red of shame was over her face. She bent
her head and turned her back to them all, and went out of the room.
The male Hautvilles looked at one another. "What's come over the girl
now?" said Abner, in his surly bass growl.

"She's a woman," said his father, and he stamped his booted feet on
the floor with a great clamp.

Madelon meantime fled up-stairs to her chamber, with her first
love-letter from Lot Gordon in her pocket. Until this the reality of
all that had happened had not fully come home to her. Without
acknowledging it to herself she had entertained a half-hope that Lot
might not have been entirely in earnest--that he might not hold her
to her promise. And then there had been the uncertainty as to his
recovery. But here was this letter, in which Lot Gordon called
her--her,