The attitude of Madelon's father and brothers towards herself and Burr had done much to strengthen suspicion.

High voices and strange remarks had been overheard by folk strolling casually, of a pleasant evening, past the Hautville house.
In truth, at first old David Hautville and all his sons except Eugene had risen against Burr and Madelon, all their pride in arms that she should return to this man who had once forsaken her for another.

But later they had yielded, for their pride was undermined by their own gloomy convictions as to Madelon, which they confided not to one another.

However, the boy Richard still greeted Burr surlily, with a fierce black flash under frowning brows, and scarcely spoke to Madelon at all until the day before her marriage.

That was set some two months after Dorothy's.
Burr and Madelon, during the days of their betrothal, were as closely beset by spies on every hand as a party of Madelon's old kindred might have been, encamped in a wooded country, where every bush veiled savage eyes and every tree stood in front of a foeman, but they did not know it.