Madelon by Mary E. Wilkins

It was four o'clock that summer afternoon when the three women -- Margaret Bean, the tavern-keeper's wife, and the storekeeper's wife -- who had followed Dorothy and Eugene into the lane to pry upon them set forth to communicate by word of mouth the scandalous proceedings they had witnessed; and long before midnight all the village knew. The women crept cautiously at a good distance behind Dorothy and Eugene out of the lane, and watched, with incredulous eyes turning to each other for confirmation, the pair walk into Parson Fair's house together. Then they could do no more, since their ears were not long enough, and each went her way to tell what she had seen.

All the neighbors knew when Eugene Hautville left Parson Fair's house that afternoon, but their knowledge stopped there. Nobody ever discovered just what was said within those four walls when Dorothy -- who, soft plumaged though she was, had flown in the faces of all her decorous feminine antecedents and her goodly teaching -- confronted her father with her new lover at her side.