time. I was late; everybody else was there when I arrived, and
the minute I entered the room I knew something had happened,
although I couldn't imagine what. Everybody looked at me in the
strangest way. Of course, Wilhelmina Mercer was the first to set
her tongue going.

"Oh, Miss Holmes, have you seen him yet?" she exclaimed.

"Seen whom?" I said non-excitedly, getting out my thimble and
patterns.

"Why, Cecil Fenwick. He's here--in Avonlea--visiting his sister,
Mrs. Maxwell."

I suppose I did what they expected me to do. I dropped
everything I held, and Josephine Cameron said afterwards that
Charlotte Holmes would never be paler when she was in her coffin.
If they had just known why I turned so pale!

"It's impossible!" I said blankly.

"It's really true," said Wilhelmina, delighted at this
development, as she supposed it, of my romance. "I was up to see
Mrs. Maxwell last night, and I met him."

"It--can't be--the same--Cecil Fenwick," I said faintly, because
I had to say something.

"Oh, yes, it is. He belongs in Blakely, New Brunswick, and he's
a lawyer, and he's been out West twenty-two years. He's oh! so