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.
It was safe enough to assume, for one who knew her and them well, that the two men did finally turn and protect her and shelter her each against himself, and his own despite, as well as one another.
After that Eugene Hautville was seen every Sunday night and twice in the week going into Parson Fair's house, and the candles burned late in the north parlor.
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.
However, Eugene was held in somewhat more of esteem than the others, since he had in his own right a snug little sum in bank which had come to him from an uncle whose name he bore.