"Matilda, we don't talk in that way here," she said, and the laughter died out of the faces of her companions and left instead amazement and admiration. They had seen Dawn angry before, and had not expected the affair to end so amicably. They felt it showed a marvellous self-control, and left her mistress of the situation. Matilda bit her lip in a vexed way and tossed her head. She felt she had lost prestige by the little incident, and Dawn was still the recognized leader of the school. It was not a pleasant thought to the older girl.
Dawn turned and walked slowly away from them all, out of the woods, down through the meadow, where grazed her quiet friends, the sheep. She still carried her gentle dignity, and none of the girls spoke until she was out of sight behind the group of chestnuts at the corner of the meadow.
Then Desire Hathaway voiced the general feeling:
"Isn't she just like a queen?"
"Oh, if you want to look at it that way!" sneered Matilda, with another toss of her head. "There are a good many kinds of queens, you know. I must say, I thought she looked like a pretty wicked one for a minute or two. She would have enjoyed tearing my eyes out if she had dared."
"Dared!" cried Desire. "You don't know her. She will dare anything that she thinks is worth while. I thought it was just splendid, the way she controlled herself."
"Oh, well, just as you think, of course," shrugged Matilda. "Come on, Polly; let's go finish our sewing."
Dawn stumbled on blindly in the pasture, trying to take in the appalling thought that perhaps the young man wanted to marry her!
Tears of indignation welled into her eyes, but she brushed them angrily aside. Why was life so dreadful, she wondered. Why did men exist to break women's hearts?—for she never doubted that the married state was one of heart-break. Such had been the lesson burned deep into her soul by suffering. A home of her own had been a sweet thought, but the serpent had entered her Eden, and she cared no more to stay there.
The next time Winthrop came it was openly, with a message from her father. All through the interview, which lasted for an hour, and was prolonged over the noonday meal, Dawn sat stiffly on the other side of Friend Ruth, watching the fishy eyes of the stranger and listening to his fulsome flatteries of the place, her small hands folded decorously, but her young heart beating painfully under the sheer folds of the 'kerchief.
On his fourth visit he bore a private letter from her father to Friend Ruth, and wore an air of assurance which made the girl's heart sink with nameless foreboding. Not even the praises of the girls for her handsome lover, their open envy of her future lot, or their merry taunts, could rouse her from a gravity which had begun to settle upon her.
This time Friend Ruth seemed to look upon the visitor in a different light. Not only was Dawn allowed to talk with him alone, but she was sent out with him for a walk in the woods.
Reluctantly she obeyed, frightened, she knew not why.
Harrington Winthrop had a winning way with him, and he was determined to win this proud, beautiful girl. Also, he was wise in the ways of the world, he did not force any undue attention upon her, but confined his conversation to telling her about the beautiful home he had seen. Rightly guessing that there was still much of the child about her, he went on to picture the house in detail, not hesitating to embellish it at will where his memory failed.
There was a garden with a fountain, and there should be flowers, all in profusion. There were clipped hedges, gravel paths, an arbor in a shady place, where she might bring her book or sewing, and where the sunshine would peer through the branches just enough to scatter gold about the leafy way.
In spite of her prejudices, she was interested. She could not help it. The longing for a real home of her own was great.
Then came the most difficult part of his task, which was to reconcile her to himself.
Skilfully he led the conversation about till he himself was the subject—his life since he had become a man and gone out into the world. Pathetically he talked of his own loneliness, until he touched the maternal chord in her nature and made her feel sorry for him. He opened up for her gaze depths of sympathy, tenderness, and pathos, which were purely imaginary and wholly impossible to his own nature. He launched into details of his own feelings which were the inspiration of the moment, because he saw they touched her. He told her how he had often been lonely almost to desperation, and how he had many and many a time pictured a home of his own, with a lovely wife at its head. The girl winced at the name "wife," but he went steadily on trying to take the strangeness out of the word, trying to touch her heart and fire her tenderness; for he rightly read the possibilities of love in the beautiful face, and it put him on his mettle to make it bloom for him.
He succeeded so far as to make her conscience sharply reprove her for the dislike she had for him. Of course if he had been lonely, too, and had had a care for her loneliness, it was a different matter. Perhaps, after all, they had something in common, and he would not be such a dreadful addition to the home she had longed for. At least, she had no right to shut him out of a dream that he held in common with her, and she tried to put aside her own feelings and look at him fairly.
So they walked the deeper into the woods, and while she did not say much in reply to his eloquent words, she did not seem actively opposed. He let his voice grow more and more tender, though he did not trouble her with words of love. He let a care for her become apparent: as they walked over the rough growth in the woods, he held the branches aside for her, and helped her over a log, and once across the stones of a little brook, touching her hand and arm deferentially. It did not appeal to Dawn in the way he hoped that it would, nor awaken any tenderness for him, but she let him lead her along a path which, had she been alone, she would have cleared at a bound, and counted an easy thing.
When he parted from her that evening to take the night boat, he gave her shrinking fingers a slight pressure in token of the understanding between them, and Dawn understood it as the sealing of a kind of unspoken contract.
After that Dawn was not surprised to receive a letter from her father in which he spoke of the young man's desire to make her his wife, and formally gave his consent. It never seemed to occur to him that the girl might have any question about the matter. A dull kind of rebellion rose in her breast and smouldered there as she read her father's letter; yet she accepted his arrangements for her life, because it seemed the only way out from a home that could never be a happy one for her; and because it offered a spot that might be called her own, and a possible opportunity to live out some of her childish dreams.
When Harrington Winthrop came again, she no longer yielded to her inward shrinking from him, but took him as she took hard tasks that she did not like but that were inevitable; and he, finding her unresisting, was careful not to do anything to mar the pleasant understanding between them. Meantime, he congratulated himself constantly upon the ease with which he had possessed himself of a promised wife whose private fortune would be no small one.
CHAPTER IV
Dawn settled into a gravity that was premature. She counted every day of her precious school year, as if it had been a priceless treasure that was slipping from her.
There were times when she roused to her old self again, and plunged madly into fun, leading her companions into wild amusements that they would never have originated by themselves. Then again she would sober down, and they could get her to say very little. It began to be
