“Mistress Audrey?” said the Governor graciously, as the lady in damask rose from her curtsy.  “Mistress Audrey whom?  Mr. Haward, you gave me not the name of the stock that hath flowered in so beauteous a bloom.”

“Why, sir, the bloom is all in all,’” answered Haward.  “What root it springs from matters not.  I trust that your Excellency is in good health, that you feel no touch of our seasoning fever?”

“I asked the lady’s name, sir,” said the Governor pointedly.  He was standing in the midst of a knot of gentlemen, members of the Council and officers of the colony.  All around the long room, seated in chairs arow against the walls, or gathered in laughing groups, or moving about with a rustle and gleam of silk, were the Virginians his guests.  From the gallery, where were bestowed the musicians out of three parishes, floated the pensive strains of a minuet, and in the centre of the polished floor, under the eyes of the company, several couples moved and postured through that stately dance.

“The lady is my ward,” said Haward lightly.  “I call her Audrey.  Child, tell his Excellency your other name.”

If he thought at all, he thought that she could do it.  But such an estray, such a piece of flotsam, was Audrey, that she could not help him out.  “They call me Darden’s Audrey,” she explained to the Governor.  “If I ever heard my father’s name, I have forgotten it.”

Her voice, though low, reached all those who had ceased from their own concerns to stare at this strange guest, this dark-eyed, shrinking beauty, so radiantly attired.  The whisper had preceded her from the hall:  there had been fluttering and comment enough as, under the fire of all those eyes, she had passed with Haward to where stood the Governor receiving his guests.  But the whisper had not reached his Excellency’s ears.  In London he had been slightly acquainted with Mr. Marmaduke Haward, and now knew him for a member of his Council, and a gentleman of much consequence in that Virginia which he had come to rule.  Moreover, he had that very morning granted a favor to Mr. Haward, and by reason thereof was inclined to think amiably of the gentleman.  Of the piece of dark loveliness whom the Virginian had brought forward to present, who could think otherwise?  But his Excellency was a formal man, punctilious, and cautious of his state.  The bow with which he received the strange lady’s curtsy had been profound; in speaking to her he had made his tones honey-sweet, while his compliment quite capped the one just paid to Mistress Evelyn Byrd.  And now it would appear that the lady had no name!  Nay, from the looks that were being exchanged, and from the tittering that had risen amongst the younger of his guests, there must be more amiss than that!  His Excellency frowned, drew himself up, and turned what was meant to be a searching and terrible eye upon the recreant in white satin.  Audrey caught the look, for which Haward cared no whit.  Oh, she knew that she had no business there, she that only the other day had gone barefoot on Darden’s errands, had been kept waiting in hall or kitchen of these people’s houses!  She knew that, for all her silken gown, she had no place among them; but she thought that they were not kind to stare and whisper and laugh, shaming her before one another and before him.  Her heart swelled; to the dreamy misery of the day and evening was added a passionate sense of hurt and wrong and injustice.  Her pride awoke, and in a moment taught her many things, though among them was no distrust of him.  Brought to bay, she put out her hand and found a gate; pushed it open, and entered upon her heritage of art.

The change was so sudden that those who had stared at her sourly or scornfully, or with malicious amusement or some stirrings of pity, drew their breath and gave ground a little.  Where was the shrinking, frightened, unbidden guest of a moment before, with downcast eyes and burning cheeks?  Here was a proud and easy and radiant lady, with witching eyes and a wonderful smile.  “I am only Audrey, your Excellency,” she said, and curtsied as she spoke.  “My other name lies buried in a valley amongst far-off mountains.”  She slightly turned, and addressed herself to a portly, velvet-clad gentleman, of a very authoritative air, who, arriving late, had just shouldered himself into the group about his Excellency.  “By token,” she smiled, “of a gold moidore that was paid for a loaf of bread.”

The new Governor appealed to his predecessor.  “What is this, Colonel Spotswood, what is this?” he demanded, somewhat testily, of the open-mouthed gentleman in velvet.

“Odso!” cried the latter. “’Tis the little maid of the sugar-tree! Marmaduke Haward’s brown elf grown into the queen of all the fairies!” Crossing to Audrey he took her by the hand.  “My dear child,” he said, with a benevolence that sat well upon him, “I always meant to keep an eye upon thee, to see that Mr. Haward did by thee all that he swore he would do.  But at first there were cares of state, and now for five years I have lived at Germanna, half way to thy mountains, where echoes from the world seldom reach me.  Permit me, my dear.”  With a somewhat cumbrous gallantry, the innocent gentleman, who had just come to town and knew not the gossip thereof, bent and kissed her upon the cheek.

Audrey curtsied with a bright face to her old acquaintance of the valley and the long road thence to the settled country.  “I have been cared for, sir,” she said.  “You see that I am happy.”

She turned to Haward, and he drew her hand within his arm.  “Ay, child,” he said.  “We are keeping others of the company from their duty to his Excellency.  Besides, the minuet invites.  I do not think I have heard music so sweet before to-night.  Your Excellency’s most obedient servant!  Gentlemen, allow us to pass.”  The crowd opened before them, and they found themselves in the centre of the room.  Two couples were walking a minuet; when they were joined by this dazzling third, the ladies bridled, bit their lips, and shot Parthian glances.

It was very fortunate, thought Audrey, that the Widow Constance had once, long ago, taught her to dance, and that, when they were sent to gather nuts or myrtle berries or fagots in the woods, she and Barbara were used to taking hands beneath the trees and moving with the glancing sunbeams and the nodding saplings and the swaying grapevine trailers.  She that had danced to the wind in the pine tops could move with ease to the music of this night.  And since it was so that with a sore and frightened and breaking heart one could yet, in some strange way, become quite another person, any person that one chose to be, these cruel folk should not laugh at her again!  They had not laughed since, before the Governor yonder, she had suddenly made believe that she was a carefree, great lady.  Well, she would make believe to them still.

Her eyes were as brilliant as Haward’s that shone with fever; a smile stayed upon her lips; she moved with dignity through the stately dance, scarce erring once, graceful and fine in all that she did.  Haward, enamored, his wits afire, went mechanically through the oft-trod measure, and swore to himself that he held in his hand the pearl of price, the nonpareil of earth.  In this dance and under cover of the music they could speak to each other unheard of those about them.

“‘Queen of all the fairies,’ did he call you?” he asked.  “That was well said.  When we are at Fair View again, thou must show me where thou wonnest with thy court, in what moonlit haunt, by what cool stream”

“I would I were this night at Fair View glebe house,” said Audrey.  “I would I were at home in the mountains.”

Her voice, sunken with pain and longing, was for him alone.  To the other dancers, to the crowded room at large, she seemed a brazen girl, with beauty to make a goddess, wit to mask as a great lady, effrontery to match that of the gentleman who had brought her here.  The age was free, and in that London which was dear to the hearts of the Virginians ladies of damaged reputation were not so unusual a feature of fashionable entertainments as to receive any especial notice.  But Williamsburgh was not London, and the dancer yonder, who held her rose-crowned head so high, was no lady of fashion.  They knew her now for that dweller at Fair View gates of whom, during the summer just past, there had been whispering enough.  Evidently, it was not for naught that Mr. Marmaduke Haward had refused invitations, given no entertainments, shut himself up at Fair View, slighting old friends and evincing no desire to make new ones.  Why, the girl was a servant, nothing more nor less; she belonged to Gideon Darden, the drunken minister; she was to have married Jean Hugon, the half-breed trader.  Look how the Governor, enlightened at last, glowered at her; and how red was Colonel Spotswood’s face; and how Mistress Evelyn Byrd, sitting in the midst of a little court of her own, made witty talk, smiled upon her circle of adorers, and never glanced toward the centre of the room, and the dancers there!

“You are so sweet and gay to-night,” said Haward to Audrey.  “Take your pleasure, child, for it is a sad world, and the blight will fall.  I love to see you happy.”

“Happy!” she answered.  “I am not happy!”

“You are above them all in beauty,” he went on.  “There is not one here that’s fit to tie your shoe.”

“Oh me!” cried Audrey.  “There is the lady that you love, and that loves you.  Why did she look at me so, in the hall yonder?  And yesterday, when she came to Mistress Stagg’s, I might not touch her or speak to her!  You told me that she was kind and good and pitiful.  I dreamed that she might let me serve her when she came to Fair View.”

“She will never come to Fair View,” he said, “nor shall I go again to Westover.  I am for my own house now, you brown enchantress, and my own garden, and the boat upon the river.  Do you remember how sweet were our days in June?  We will live them over again, and there shall come for us, besides, a fuller summer”

“It is winter now,” said Audrey, with a sobbing breath, “and cold and dark!  I do not know myself, and you are strange.  I beg you to let me go away.  I wish to wash off this paint, to put on my own gown.  I am no lady; you do wrong to keep me here.  See, all the company are frowning at me!  The minister will hear what I have done and be angry, and Mistress Deborah will beat me.  I care not for that, but you Oh, you have gone far away, as far as Fair View, as far as the mountains!  I am speaking to a stranger”

In the dance their raised hands met again.  “You see me, you speak to me at last,” he said ardently.  “That other, that cold brother of the snows, that paladin and dream knight that you yourself made and dubbed him me, he has gone, Audrey; nay, he never was!  But I myself, I am not abhorrent to you?”

“Oh,” she answered, “it is all dark!  I cannot see I cannot understand”

The time allotted to minuets having elapsed, the musicians after a short pause began to play an ancient, lively air, and a number of ladies and gentlemen, young, gayly dressed, and light of heart as of heels, engaged in a country dance.  When they were joined by Mr. Marmaduke Haward and his shameless companion, there arose a great rustling and whispering.  A young girl in green taffeta was dancing alone, wreathing in and out between the silken, gleaming couples, coquetting with the men by means of fan and eyes, but taking hands and moving a step or two with each sister of the dance.  When she approached Audrey, the latter smiled and extended her hand, because that was the way the lady nearest her had done.  But the girl in green stared coldly, put her hand behind her, and, with the very faintest salute to Mr. Marmaduke Haward, danced on her way.  For one moment the smile died on Audrey’s lips; then it came resolutely back, and she held her head high.

The men, forming in two rows, drew their rapiers with a flourish, and, crossing them overhead, made an arch of steel under which the women must pass.  Haward’s blade touched that of an old acquaintance.  “I have been leaning upon the back of a lady’s chair,” said the latter gruffly, under cover of the music and the clashing steel, “a lady dressed in rose color, who’s as generous (to all save one poor devil) as she is fair.  I promised her I would take her message; the Lord knows I would go to the bottom of the sea to give her pleasure!  She says that you are not yourself; begs that you will go quietly away”

An exclamation from the man next him, and a loud murmur mixed with some laughter from those in the crowded room who were watching the dancers, caused the gentleman to break off in the middle of his message.  He glanced over his shoulder; then, with a shrug, turned to his vis-a-vis in white satin.  “Now you see that ’twill not answer, not in Virginia.  The women bless them! have a way of cutting Gordian knots.”

A score of ladies, one treading in the footsteps of another, should have passed beneath the flashing swords.  But there had thrust itself into their company a plague spot, and the girl in green taffeta and a matron in silver brocade, between whom stood the hateful presence, indignantly stepped out of line and declined to dance.  The fear of infection spreading like wildfire, the ranks refused to close, and the company was thrown into confusion.  Suddenly the girl in green, by nature a leader of her kind, walked away, with a toss of her head, from the huddle of those who were uncertain what to do, and joined her friends among the spectators, who received her with acclaim.  The sound and her example were warranty enough for the cohort she had quitted.  A moment, and it was in virtuous retreat, and the dance was broken up.

The gentlemen, who saw themselves summarily deserted, abruptly lowered their swords.  One laughed; another, flown with wine, gave utterance to some coarse pleasantry; a third called to the musicians to stop the music.  Darden’s Audrey stood alone, brave in her beautiful borrowed dress and the color that could not leave her cheeks.  But her lips had whitened, the smile was gone, and her eyes were like those of a hunted deer.  She looked mutely about her:  how could she understand, who trusted so completely, who lived in a labyrinth without a clue, who had built her dream world so securely that she had left no way of egress for herself?  These were cruel people!  She was mad to get away, to tear off this strange dress, to fling herself down in the darkness, in the woods, hiding her face against the earth!  But though she was only Audrey and so poor a thing, she had for her portion a dignity and fineness of nature that was a stay to her steps.  Barbara, though not so poor and humble a maid, might have burst into tears, and run crying from the room and the house; but to do that Audrey would have been ashamed.

“It was you, Mr. Corbin, that laughed, I think?” said Haward.  “To-morrow I shall send to know the reason of your mirth.  Mr. Everard, you will answer to me for that pretty oath.  Mr. Travis, there rests the lie that you uttered just now:  stoop and take it again.”  He flung his glove at Mr. Travis’s feet.

A great hubbub and exclamation arose.  Mr. Travis lifted the glove with the point of his rapier, and in a loud voice repeated the assertion which had given umbrage to Mr. Haward of Fair View.  That gentleman sprang unsteadily forward, and the blades of the two crossed in dead earnest.  A moment, and the men were forced apart; but by this time the whole room was in commotion.  The musicians craned their necks over the gallery rail, a woman screamed, and half a dozen gentlemen of years and authority started from the crowd of witnesses to the affair and made toward the centre of the room, with an eye to preventing further trouble.  Where much wine had been drunken and twenty rapiers were out, matters might go from bad to worse.

Another was before them.  A lady in rose color had risen from her chair and glided across the polished floor to the spot where trouble was brewing.  “Gentlemen, for shame!” she cried.  Her voice was bell-like in its clear sweetness, final in its grave rebuke and its recall to sense and decency.  She was Mistress Evelyn Byrd, who held sovereignty in Virginia, and at the sound of her voice, the command of her raised hand, the clamor suddenly ceased, and the angry group, parting, fell back as from the presence of its veritable queen.

Evelyn went up to Audrey and took her by the hand.  “I am not tired of dancing, as were those ladies who have left us,” she said, with a smile, and in a sweet and friendly voice.  “See, the gentlemen are waiting I Let us finish out this measure, you and me.”

At her gesture of command the lines that had so summarily broken re-formed.  Back into the old air swung the musicians; up went the swords, crossing overhead with a ringing sound, and beneath the long arch of protecting steel moved to the music the two women, the dark beauty and the fair, the princess and the herdgirl.  Evelyn led, and Audrey, following, knew that now indeed she was walking in a dream.

A very few moments, and the measure was finished.  A smile, a curtsy, a wave of Evelyn’s hand, and the dancers, disbanding, left the floor.  Mr. Corbin, Mr. Everard, and Mr. Travis, each had a word to say to Mr. Haward of Fair View, as they passed that gentleman.

Haward heard, and answered to the point; but when presently Evelyn said, “Let us go into the garden,” and he found himself moving with her and with Audrey through the buzzing, staring crowd toward the door of the Governor’s house, he thought that it was into Fair View garden they were about to descend.  And when they came out upon the broad, torchlit walk, and he saw gay parties of ladies and gentlemen straying here and there beneath the trees, he thought it strange that he had forgotten that he had guests this night.  As for the sound of the river below his terrace, he had never heard so loud a murmur.  It grew and filled the night, making thin and far away the voices of his guests.

There was a coach at the gates, and Mr. Grymes, who awhile ago had told him that he had a message to deliver, was at the coach door.  Evelyn had her hand upon his arm, and her voice was speaking to him from as far away as across the river.  “I am leaving the ball,” it said, “and I will take the girl in my coach to the place where she is staying.  Promise me that you will not go back to the house yonder; promise me that you will go away with Mr. Grymes, who is also weary of the ball”

“Oh,” said Mr. Grymes lightly, “Mr. Haward agrees with me that Marot’s best room, cool and quiet, a bottle of Burgundy, and a hand at piquet are more alluring than the heat and babel we have left.  We are going at once, Mistress Evelyn.  Haward, I propose that on our way to Marot’s we knock up Dr. Contesse, and make him free of our company.”

As he spoke, he handed into the coach the lady in flowered damask, who had held up her head, but said no word, and the lady in rose-colored brocade, who, through the length of the ballroom and the hall and the broad walk where people passed and repassed, had kept her hand in Audrey’s, and had talked, easily and with smiles, to the two attending gentlemen.  He shut to the coach door, and drew back, with a low bow, when Haward’s deeply flushed, handsome face appeared for a moment at the lowered glass.

“Art away to Westover, Evelyn?” he asked.  “Then ’t is ’Good-by, sweetheart!’ for I shall not go to Westover again.  But you have a fair road to travel, there are violets by the wayside; for it is May Day, you know, and the woods are white with dogwood and purple with the Judas-tree.  The violets are for you; but the great white blossoms, and the boughs of rosy mist, and all the trees that wave in the wind are for Audrey.”  His eyes passed the woman whom he would have wed, and rested upon her companion in the coach.  “Thou fair dryad!” he said.  “Two days hence we will keep tryst beneath the beech-tree in the woods beyond the glebe house.”

The man beside him put a hand upon his shoulder and plucked him back, nor would look at Evelyn’s drawn and whitened face, but called to the coachman to go on.  The black horses put themselves into motion, the equipage made a wide turn, and the lights of the Palace were left behind.

Evelyn lodged in a house upon the outskirts of the town, but from the Palace to Mistress Stagg’s was hardly more than a stone’s throw.  Not until the coach was drawing near the small white house did either of the women speak.  Then Audrey broke into an inarticulate murmur, and stooping would have pressed her cheek against the hand that had clasped hers only a little while before.  But Evelyn snatched her hand away, and with a gesture of passionate repulsion shrank into her corner of the coach.  “Oh, how dare you touch me!” she cried.  “How dare you look at me, you serpent that have stung me so!” Able to endure no longer, she suddenly gave way to angry laughter.  “Do you think I did it for you, put such humiliation upon myself for you?  Why, you wanton, I care not if you stand in white at every church door in Virginia!  It was for him, for Mr. Marmaduke Haward of Fair View, for whose name and fame, if he cares not for them himself, his friends have yet some care!” The coach stopped, and the footman opened the door.  “Descend, if you please,” went on Evelyn clearly and coldly.  “You have had your triumph.  I say not there is no excuse for him, you are very beautiful.  Good-night.”

Audrey stood between the lilac bushes and watched the coach turn from Palace into Duke of Gloucester Street; then went and knocked at the green door.  It was opened by Mistress Stagg in person, who drew her into the parlor, where the good-natured woman had been sitting all alone, and in increasing alarm as to what might be the outcome of this whim of Mr. Marmaduke Haward’s.  Now she was full of inquiries, ready to admire and to nod approval, or to shake her head and cry, “I told you so!” according to the turn of the girl’s recital.

But Audrey had little to say, little to tell.  Yes, oh yes, it had been a very grand sight....  Yes, Mr. Haward was kind; he had always been kind to her....  She had come home with Mistress Evelyn Byrd in her coach....  Might she go now to her room?  She would fold the dress very carefully.

Mistress Stagg let her go, for indeed there was no purpose to be served in keeping her, seeing that the girl was clearly dazed, spoke without knowing what she said, and stood astare like one of Mrs. Salmon’s beautiful was ladies.  She would hear all about it in the morning, when the child had slept off her excitement.  They at the Palace couldn’t have taken her presence much amiss, or she would never in the world have come home in the Westover coach.