igure haunted her thoughts all night. If Anne had not run over
the next day and bolstered up her convictions, she might have spoiled
everything by prematurely relenting.

Ludovic, meanwhile, stood still on the road, quite oblivious to the
hoots and comments of the vastly amused small boy contingent, until
Theodora and his rival disappeared from his view under the firs in the
hollow of her lane. Then he turned about and went home, not with his
usual leisurely amble, but with a perturbed stride which proclaimed his
inward disquiet.

He felt bewildered. If the world had come suddenly to an end or if the
lazy, meandering Grafton River had turned about and flowed up hill,
Ludovic could not have been more astonished. For fifteen years he had
walked home from meetings with Theodora; and now this elderly stranger,
with all the glamour of "the States" hanging about him, had coolly
walked off with her under Ludovic's very nose. Worse--most unkindest
cut of all--Theodora had gone with him willingly; nay, she had evidently
enjoyed his company. Ludovic felt the stirring of a righteous anger in
his easy-going soul.

When he reached the end of his lane, he paused at his gate, and looked
at his house, set back from the lane in a crescent of birches. Even in
the moonlight, its weather-worn aspect was plainly visible. He thought
of the "palatial residence" rumour ascribed to Arnold Sherman in Boston,
and stroked his chin nervously with his sunburnt fingers. Then he
doubled up his fist and struck it smartly on the gate-post.

"Theodora needn't think she is going to jilt me in this fashion,
after keeping company with me for fifteen years," he said. "I'LL
have something to say to it, Arnold Sherman or no Arnold Sherman. The
impudence of the puppy!"

The next morning Ludovic drove to Carmody and engaged Joshua Pye to
come and paint his house, and that evening, although he was not due till
Saturday night, he went down to see Theodora.

Arnold Sherman was there before him, and was actually sitting in
Ludovic's own prescriptive chair. Ludovic had to deposit himself in
Theodora's new wicker rocker, where he looked and felt lamentably out of
place.

If Theodora felt the situation to be awkward, she carried it off
superbly. She had never looked handsomer, and Ludovic perceived that she
wore her second best silk dress. He wondered miserably if she had donned
it in expectation of his rival's call. She had never put on silk dresses
for him.