Page:Further Chronicles of Avonlea (1920).djvu/53

Rh chin, and a fine nose, and the most fascinating smile!”

“What was he?” asked Maggie.

“A young lawyer,” I said, my choice of profession decided by an enlarged crayon portrait of Mary Gillespie’s deceased brother on an easel before me. He had been a lawyer.

“Why didn’t you marry him?” demanded Susette.

“We quarreled,” I answered sadly. “A terribly bitter quarrel. Oh, we were both so young and so foolish. It was my fault. I vexed Cecil by flirting with another man ”— wasn’t I coming on! —“ and he was jealous and angry. He went out West and never came back. I have never seen him since, and I do not even know if he is alive. But — but — I could never care for any other man.”

“Oh, how interesting!” sighed Wilhelmina. “I do so love sad love stories. But perhaps he will come back some day yet, Miss Holmes.”

“Oh, no, never now,” I said, shaking my head. “He has forgotten all about me, I dare say. Or if he hasn’t, he has never forgiven me.”

Mary Gillespie’s Susan Jane announced tea at this moment, and I was thankful, for my imagination was giving out, and I didn’t know what question those girls would ask next. But I felt already a change in the mental atmosphere surrounding me,