“So you cannot say ‘yes’ to my asking, little maid?” he began, quiet and smiling.  “Cannot trust me that I have reasons for the asking?  Well, I will not ask again, Audrey, since it is so great a thing’”—­“Oh,” cried Audrey, “you know that I would die for you!” The tears welled over, but she brushed them away with a trembling hand; then stood with raised face, her eyes soft and dewy, a strange smile upon her lips.  She spoke at last as simply as a child:  “Why you want me, that am only Audrey, to go with you to the Palace yonder, I cannot tell.  But I will go, though I am only Audrey, and I have no other dress than this”—­

Haward got unsteadily to his feet, and lightly touched the dark head that she bowed upon her hands.  “Why, now you are Audrey again,” he said approvingly.  “Why, child, I would do you a pleasure!” He turned to the player’s wife.  “She must not go in this guise.  Have you no finery stowed away?”

Now, Mistress Stagg, though much scandalized, and very certain that all this would never do, was in her way an artist, and could see as in a mirror what bare throat and shoulders, rich hair drawn loosely up, a touch of rouge, a patch or two, a silken gown, might achieve for Audrey.  And after all, had not Deborah told her that the girl was Mr. Haward’s ward, not Darden’s, and that though Mr. Haward came and went as he pleased, and was very kind to Audrey, so that Darden was sure of getting whatever the girl asked for, yet she was a good girl, and there was no harm?  For the talk that day,—­people were very idle, and given to thinking the forest afire when there was only the least curl of smoke.  And in short and finally it was none of her business; but with the aid of a certain chest upstairs, she knew what she could do!  To the ball might go a beauty would make Mistress Evelyn Byrd look to her laurels!

“There’s the birthday dress that Madam Carter sent us only last week,” she began hesitatingly.  “It’s very beautiful, and a’most as good as new, and ’twould suit you to a miracle—­But I vow you must not go, Audrey!...  To be sure, the damask is just the tint for you, and there are roses would answer for your hair.  But la, sir, you know ’twill never do, never in this world.”

Half an hour later, Haward rose from his chair and bowed low as to some highborn and puissant dame.  The fever that was now running high in his veins flushed his cheek and made his eyes exceedingly bright.  When he went up to Audrey, and in graceful mockery of her sudden coming into her kingdom, took her hand and, bending, kissed it, the picture that they made cried out for some painter to preserve it.  Her hand dropped from his clasp, and buried itself in rich folds of flowered damask; the quick rise and fall of her bosom stirred soft, yellowing laces, and made to flash like diamonds some ornaments of marcasite; her face was haunting in its pain and bewilderment and great beauty, and in the lie which her eyes gave to the false roses beneath those homes of sadness and longing.  She had no word to say, she was “only Audrey,” and she could not understand.  But she wished to do his bidding, and so, when he cried out upon her melancholy, and asked her if ’twere indeed a Sunday in New England instead of a Saturday in Virginia, she smiled, and strove to put on the mind as well as the garb of a gay lady who might justly go to the Governor’s ball.