with rage and disdain--and all the time she lilted without one break.

The ball swung on and on, and Madelon, up in the musicians' gallery,
sang the old country-dances in the curious dissyllabic fashion termed
lilting. It never occurred to her to wonder how it was that Dorothy
Fair, the daughter of the orthodox minister, should be at the
ball--she who had been brought up to believe in the sinful and
hellward tendencies of the dance. Madelon only grasped the fact that
she was there with Burr; but others wondered, and the surprise had
been great when Dorothy in her blue brocade had appeared in the
ball-room.

This had been largely of late years a liberal and Unitarian village,
but Parson Fair had always held stanchly to his stern orthodox
tenets, and promulgated them undiluted before his thinning
congregations and in his own household. Dorothy could not only not
play cards or dance, but she could not be present at a party where
the cards were produced or the fiddle played. There was, indeed, a
rumor that she had learned to dance when she was in Boston at school,
but no one knew for certain.

Dorothy Fair was advancing daintily between the two long lines,
holding up her blue brocade to clear her blue-satin shoes, to meet
the young man from the opposite corner, flinging out gayly towards
her, when suddenly, with no warning whatever, a great dark woman sped
after her through the dance, like a wild animal of her native woods.
She reached out her black hand and caught Dorothy by the white,
lace-draped arm, and she whispered loud in her ear.

The people near, finding it hard to understand the African woman's