handsome, and just as you described him, except that his hair is
quite gray. He has never married--I asked Mrs. Maxwell--so you
see he has never forgotten you, Miss Holmes. And, oh, I believe
everything is going to come out all right."

I couldn't exactly share her cheerful belief. Everything seemed
to me to be coming out most horribly wrong. I was so mixed up I
didn't know what to do or say. I felt as if I were in a bad
dream--it MUST be a dream--there couldn't really be a Cecil
Fenwick! My feelings were simply indescribable. Fortunately
every one put my agitation down to quite a different cause, and
they very kindly left me alone to recover myself. I shall never
forget that awful afternoon. Right after tea I excused myself
and went home as fast as I could go. There I shut myself up in
my room, but NOT to write poetry in my blank book. No, indeed!
I felt in no poetical mood.

I tried to look the facts squarely in the face. There was a
Cecil Fenwick, extraordinary as the coincidence was, and he was
here in Avonlea. All my friends--and foes--believed that he was
the estranged lover of my youth. If he stayed long in Avonlea,
one of two things was bound to happen. He would hear the story I
had told about him and deny it, and I would be held up to shame
and derision for the rest of my natural life; or else he would
simply go away in ignorance, and everybody would suppose he had
forgotten me and would pity me maddeningly. The latter
possibility was bad enough, but it wasn't to be compared to the
former; and oh, how I prayed--yes, I DID pray about it--that he
would go right away. But Providence had other views for me.