The passage walls were spotless with white-wash, and the shadows of the trees standing close behind showed deeply green beyond. Against these soft green shadows and on one side of the passage stood the white-haired Frenchman. His fiddle was under his chin, held tenderly as though it were a precious thing that he dearly loved. His head was a little on one side and his eyes were partially closed,--like the birds,--as if he too were under the spell of his own music. His right arm, jauntily raised, wielded the bow: his left toe was advanced, then his right, now this one, now that one--advancing, bowing, retiring--all as solemn as solemn could be.
And more serious if possible than Monsieur Beauchamp was Doris herself, facing him from the opposite side of the passage; grave, indeed, as any wood nymph performing some sacred rite in a sylvan temple. When the young man saw her first, she stood poised and fluttering, as a butterfly poises and flutters uncertain whether to alight or to fly. The thin skirt of the book-muslin party coat, delicately held out at the sides by the very tips of her fingers, and lightly caught by the soft wind, spread like the wings of a white bird. The slippers, heel-less and yellow as buttercups, were thus brought bewitchingly into view--with the narrow ribbon daintily crossed over the instep and tied around the ankle--as they darted in and out beneath the fluttering skirt. Her golden hair, loosed by the dance and the breeze, fell around her shoulders in a radiant mantle, growing more beautiful with every airy movement. The exquisite curve of her cheek, nearly always colorless, now faintly reflected the rose-red of her perfect lips as the snowdrift reflects the glow of the sunset. Her large dark eyes were lost under her long dark lashes, and never wandered for an instant from the little Frenchman's guiding toes. And Doris understood those toes perfectly, although she knew not a word of the dancing-master's native language, and not much of her own when spoken by him, as he now mingled the two, quite carried away by this sudden and late return to his true vocation. She followed their every motion as thistledown follows the wind: stepping delicately, advancing coquettishly, courtesying quaintly--as Miss Judy had taught her,--and retiring, alluring, only to begin over and over again. It was all as artless, as graceful, and as natural as the floating of the thistledown; and such a wonderful dance as never was seen on land or sea, unless--as the young man thought, with the sight going to his head like royal burgundy--the fairies might have danced something of the kind on Erin's enchanted moss within the moonlit ring.