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!