The time of their return was approaching. More than
once a casual caller, hearing dance-music and the rhythmic pulse
of feet, entered, only to find Harrington scraping away and the
other two beating time or arguing noisily over a mooted step.
Madeline was never in evidence, having precipitately fled to the
inner room.
On one of these nights Cal Galbraith dropped in. Encouraging news
had just come down from Stuart River, and Madeline had surpassed
herself--not in walk alone, and carriage and grace, but in
womanly roguishness. They had indulged in sharp repartee and she
had defended herself brilliantly; and then, yielding to the
intoxication of the moment, and of her own power, she had
bullied, and mastered, and wheedled, and patronized them with
most astonishing success. And instinctively, involuntarily, they
had bowed, not to her beauty, her wisdom, her wit, but to that
indefinable something in woman to which man yields yet cannot
name.
The room was dizzy with sheer delight as she and Prince whirled
through the last dance of the evening. Harrington was throwing in
inconceivable flourishes, while Malemute Kid, utterly abandoned,
had seized the broom and was executing mad gyrations on his own
account.
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