approved of by the ladies of Fair View parish, but had they seen how wistful was the face of the brown girl with her, they might have turned aside, spoken, and let the storm go by.  The girl herself was scarcely noticed.  Few had ever heard her story, or, hearing it, had remembered; the careless many thought her an orphan, bound to Darden and his wife,—­in effect their servant.  If she had beauty, the ladies and gentlemen who saw her, Sunday after Sunday, in the minister’s pew, had scarce discovered it.  She was too dark, too slim, too shy and strange of look, with her great brown eyes and that startled turn of her head.  Their taste was for lilies and roses, and it was not an age that counted shyness a grace.

Mr. Marmaduke Haward was not likely to be accused of diffidence.  He had come out of church with the sleepy-headed churchwarden, who was now wide awake and mightily concerned to know what horse Mr. Haward meant to enter for the great race at Mulberry Island, while at the foot of the steps he was seized upon by another portly vestryman, and borne off to be presented to three blooming young ladies, quick to second their papa’s invitation home to dinner.  Mr. Haward was ready to curse his luck that he was engaged elsewhere; but were not these Graces the children to whom he had used to send sugar-plums from Williamsburgh, years and years ago?  He vowed that the payment, which he had never received, he would take now with usury, and proceeded to salute the cheek of each protesting fair.  The ladies found him vastly agreeable; old and new friends crowded around him; he put forth his powers and charmed all hearts,—­and all the while inwardly cursed the length of way to the gates, and the tardy progress thereto of his friends and neighbors.

But however slow in ebbing, the tide was really set toward home and dinner.  Darden, coming out of the vestry room, found the churchyard almost cleared, and the road in a cloud of dust.  The greater number of those who came a-horseback were gone, and there had also departed both berlins, the calash, and two chaises.  Mr. Haward was handing the three Graces into the coach with the chained coachman, Juba standing by, holding his master’s horse.  Darden grew something purpler in the face, and, rumbling oaths, went over to the three beneath the oak.  “How many spoke to you to-day?” he asked roughly of his wife.  “Did he come and speak?”

“No, he didn’t!” cried Mistress Deborah tartly.  “And all the gentry went by; only Mr. Bray stopped to say that everybody knew of your fight with Mr. Bailey at the French ordinary, and that the Commissary had sent for Bailey, and was going to suspend him.  I wish to Heaven I knew why I married you, to be looked down upon by every Jill, when I might have had his Lordship’s own man!  Of all the fools”—­

“You were not the only one,” answered her husband grimly.  “Well, let’s home; there’s dinner yet.  What is it, Audrey?” This in answer to an inarticulate sound from the girl.