Virginia -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775 -- Fiction
It was very fortunate, thought Audrey, that the Widow Constance
had once, long ago, taught her to dance, and that, when they were
sent to gather nuts or myrtle berries or fagots in the woods, she
and Barbara were used to taking hands beneath the trees and moving
with the glancing sunbeams and the nodding saplings and the swaying
grapevine trailers. She that had danced to the wind in the pine tops
could move with ease to the music of this night. And since it was so
that with a sore and frightened and breaking heart one could yet, in
some strange way, become quite another person,--any person that one
chose to be,--these cruel folk should not laugh at her again! They
had not laughed since, before the Governor yonder, she had suddenly
made believe that she was a carefree, great lady. Well, she would make
believe to them still.
Her eyes were as brilliant as Haward’s that shone with fever; a smile
stayed upon her lips; she moved with dignity through the stately dance,
scarce erring once, graceful and fine in all that she did. Haward,
enamored, his wits afire, went mechanically through the oft-trod
measure, and swore to himself that he held in his hand the pearl of
price, the nonpareil of earth. In this dance and under cover of the
music they could speak to each other unheard of those about them.
“‘Queen of all the fairies,’ did he call you?” he asked. “That was well
said. When we are at Fair View again, thou must show me where thou
wonnest with thy court, in what moonlit haunt, by what cool stream”--
“I would I were this night at Fair View glebe house,” said Audrey. “I
would I were at home in the mountains.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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