Suddenly all Madelon's beauty was cheapened in her own eyes.

She saw herself swart and harsh-faced as some old savage squaw beside this fair angel.

She turned on herself as well as on her recreant lover with rage and disdain--and all the time she lilted without one break.
The ball swung on and on, and Madelon, up in the musicians' gallery, sang the old country-dances in the curious dissyllabic fashion termed lilting.

It never occurred to her to wonder how it was that Dorothy Fair, the daughter of the orthodox minister, should be at the ball--she who had been brought up to believe in the sinful and hellward tendencies of the dance.

Madelon only grasped the fact that she was there with Burr; but others wondered, and the surprise had been great when Dorothy in her blue brocade had appeared in the ball-room.
This had been largely of late years a liberal and Unitarian village, but Parson Fair had always held stanchly to his stern orthodox tenets, and promulgated them undiluted before his thinning congregations and in his own household.