I hastily reviewed my past. There was only one place to locate
Cecil Fenwick. The only time I had ever been far enough away
from Avonlea in my life was when I was eighteen and had gone to
visit an aunt in New Brunswick.

"In Blakely, New Brunswick," I said, almost believing that I had
when I saw how they all took it in unsuspectingly. "I was just
eighteen and he was twenty-three."

"What did he look like?" Susette wanted to know.

"Oh, he was very handsome." I proceeded glibly to sketch my
ideal. To tell the dreadful truth, I was enjoying myself; I
could see respect dawning in those girls' eyes, and I knew that I
had forever thrown off my reproach. Henceforth I should be a
woman with a romantic past, faithful to the one love of her
life--a very, very different thing from an old maid who had never
had a lover.

"He was tall and dark, with lovely, curly black hair and
brilliant, piercing eyes. He had a splendid 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.