Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 22, 2025
They said little to her, treating her with a kind of forbearing compassion; but the indignation of them all was fierce, although held well in check, against Burr Gordon. Him they held accountable for all. Burr Gordon might well have been quit of any charge of cowardice had he shrunk from facing the male Hautvilles on those days. They passed him in the road with the looks of surly dogs in leash.
The banns were published in a month's time. Some accounted it unseemly haste, after the other banns which had come to naught, and some said 'twas better so, and they blamed not Parson Fair for placing such a flighty and jilting maid safe within the pale of wedlock and they guessed he was thankful enough to find a husband for her, even if 'twas one of the Hautvilles.
"There's sick folks here," said Margaret Bean, shivering in the doorway. "You hadn't ought to holler so." Her tearful eyes were more frankly hostile than usual. She had always looked down from her own slight eminence of life upon these Hautvilles, and now was full of scorn that her master was to marry one of them.
The sturdy males of the family had handed down the name and the characteristics of the races through years of intermarriage with the English settlers. All the Hautvilles the father, the four sons, and the daughter were tall and dark, and straight as arrows, and they all had wondrous grace of manner, which abashed and half offended, while it charmed, the stiff village people.
After the marriage the bride tied on a white-muslin apron and passed cake and currant wine; and the great Hautvilles sitting in sober state around the room, Elvira Gordon in her black satin and pearls, pretty Dorothy, and Parson Fair partook.
She would simply have resolved to give the property to Burr if she should outlive Lot, and she would have carried out her resolution. Consciously, perhaps, this consideration was no more evident to her father and her brothers than to herself. The Hautvilles were not mercenary, and retaliation, involving personal profit at the expense of an enemy, was not of their code.
It was probable that he also, notwithstanding his Christian grace, shared somewhat the popular sentiments towards these musical and Bohemian Hautvilles; yet he looked with a dignified kindness at the girl. "I trust you are not ill," he said, without answering her question as to whether she might see Dorothy. Madelon did not act as if she heard what he said.
That afternoon Madelon went to meeting and sang again, and when she got home Margaret Bean was waiting for her, sitting, a motionless, swaddled figure, beside a window. The Hautvilles never locked their doors while away from home, and she had walked in and waited at her ease until Madelon should return.
The Hautvilles were said to have French and Indian blood yet, in strong measure, in their veins; it was certain that they had both, although it was fairly back in history since the first Hautville, who, report said, was of a noble French family, had espoused an Iroquois Indian girl.
No one addressed a word to Madelon. After breakfast David and his son Abner put on their leather jackets and their fur caps, and set forth for the woods with their axes, but Eugene lounged gracefully over to the hearth and sat down on the settle, and began reading his Shakespeare book. Eugene was the only one of the Hautvilles who ever read books.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking