This Dorothy Fair, the minister's daughter, of gentle New England lineage, the descendant of college-learned men, and of women who had held themselves with a fine dignity and mild reserve in the village society, the sole heiress of what seemed a goodly property to the simple needs of the day, appealed to his reason as well as his heart.

He remained until near midnight, while the old black woman crouched with the patience of a watching animal outside the door, and he wooed Dorothy Fair with ardor and delight, although her softly affectionate kisses were to Madelon Hautville's as the fall of snow-flakes to drops of warm honey.

And although after he had gone home and fallen asleep his dreams were mixed, still when he waked with the image of Madelon between himself and Dorothy, because sleep had set his heart free, it was still with that sense of approbation.
Madelon Hautville was not considered a fair match for a young man who had claims to ambition.

The Hautville family held a peculiar place in public estimation.

They belonged not to any defined stratum of the village society, but formed rather a side ledge, a cropping, of quite another kind, at which people looked askance.