The night before Madelon was married, as if by some tacit understanding of peace and harmony, the Hautvilles came together for a concert in the great living-room.  Not one had said to another, “This is Madelon’s last night at home, and we have been wroth with her; let us bury the hatchet, and raise our voices with one accord in our old songs;” but one impulse had seemed to move them all, as one wind moves the forest trees who are kin to one another, and they were all together at twilight, even Eugene and his bride.

Burr Gordon came also, but he and Madelon did not sit apart that evening.  The weather was cool, even for late September, and an early frost was threatened.  A great fire blazed on the hearth.  Burr and Dorothy, on the settle in the chimney-corner, listened to the Hautville chorus, and Burr looked always at Madelon and Dorothy at Eugene.  The Hautvilles stood together before the fire, old David with his bass-viol at his side, like the wife of his bosom; Louis holding his violin on his shoulder, like a child, pressing his dark cheek against it, and Eugene and Abner and Richard and Madelon uplifting their voices in the old songs and fugues.

The doors and windows were shut.  Nobody heard nor saw Lot Gordon when he crept like a fox round the house, and came under a window and rested his chin on the sill and remained there looking at Madelon.  She wore that night a soft gown of crimson wool, which clung about her limbs and her bosom, and showed her bare throat swelling with song into new curves which were indeed those of music itself.  Lot, as he looked at her, saw her with the full meaning of her beauty as never Burr could, and as she could never see herself, for there is no looking-glass on earth like a vain love when it rises above the slight of its own desire.  Greater praise than she would ever know again in her whole life went up for Madelon outside that window, as she sang, but she neither knew it nor missed anything when Lot went away.

At ten o’clock the concert ceased.  Lot slunk away noiselessly, and soon Eugene and Dorothy went home, and Burr, lingering for a good-night kiss or two in the door.

Madelon set bread to rise that night, and fulfilled her little round of nightly tasks for the last time.  Her father and brothers went to bed and left her there—­all but Richard.  He remained in a corner of the settle, his slim length flung out carelessly, his head tipped back as if he were asleep; but his black eyes flashed bright under their lids at his sister whenever she did not look at him.  Madelon said not a word until her tasks were done; then she came and stood in front of Richard, and looked at him, frowning a little, for her pride was stung at his treatment of her, but holding out her hand.  “Can’t you bid me good-night, Richard?” said she, and tried to smile at him with that old loving comradeship which he had disowned.

The boy maintained his sullen silence for a moment, and Madelon waited.  Then suddenly he cried, “Good-night,” with sharp intonations, like the response of a surly dog, and sprang up and thrust something hard into her hand, with such roughness that it hurt her, and she started.