you see, he would not be breaking his word. He hasn’t referred to the matter for years, but I presume that he is of the same mind still. And they are just as much in love with each other as they ever were. He’s always hanging about where she is — when other people are there, too, that is. He avoids her like a plague when she is alone. That was why he was stuck out in the blue room with us to-day. There doesn’t seem to be a particle of resentment between them. If Lucinda would only speak! But that Lucinda will not do.”
“Don’t you think she will yet?” said Mrs. George.
Mrs. Frederick shook her crimped head sagely.
“Not now. The whole thing has hardened too long. Her pride will never let her speak. We used to hope she would be tricked into it by forgetfulness or accident — we used to lay traps for her — but all to no effect. It is such a shame, too. They were made for each other. Do you know, I get cross when I begin to thrash the whole silly affair over like this. Doesn’t it sound as if we were talking of the quarrel of two schoolchildren? Of late years we have learned that it does not do to speak of Lucinda to Romney, even in the most commonplace way. He seems to resent it.”
“HE ought to speak,” cried Mrs. George warmly. “Even if she were in the wrong ten times over, he ought to overlook it and speak first.”
“But he won’t. And she won’t. You never saw two such determined mortals. They get it from their grandfather on the mother’s side — old Absalom Gordon. There is no such stubbornness on the Penhallow side. His obstinacy was a proverb, my dear — actually a proverb. What ever he said, he would stick to if the skies fell. He was a terrible old man to swear, too,” added Mrs. Frederick, dropping into irrelevant reminiscence. “He spent a long while in a mining camp in his younger days and he never got over it — the habit of swearing, I mean. It would have made your blood run cold, my dear, to have heard him go on at times. And yet he was a real good old man every other way. He couldn’t help it someway. He tried to, but he used to say that profanity came as natural to him as breathing. It used to mortify his family terribly. Fortunately, none of them took after him in that respect. But he’s dead — and one shouldn’t speak ill of the dead. I must go and get Mattie Penhallow to do my hair. I would burst these sleeves clean out if I tried to do it myself and I don’t want to dress over again. You won’t be likely to talk to Romney about Lucinda again, my dear Cecilia?”
“Fifteen years!” murmured Mrs. George helplessly to the dahlias. “Engaged for fifteen years and never speaking to each other! Dear heart and soul, think of it! Oh, these Penhallows!”
Meanwhile, Lucinda, serenely unconscious that her love story was being mouthed over by Mrs. Frederick in the dahlia garden, was dressing for the wedding. Lucinda still enjoyed dressing for a festivity, since the mirror still dealt gently with her. Moreover, she had a new dress. Now, a new dress — and especially one as nice as this — was a rarity with Lucinda, who belonged to a branch of the Penhallows noted for being chronically hard up. Indeed, Lucinda and her widowed mother were positively poor, and hence a new dress was an event in Lucinda’s existence. An uncle had given her this one — a beautiful, perishable thing, such as Lucinda would never have dared to choose for herself, but in which she revelled with feminine delight.
It was of pale green voile — a colour which brought out admirably the ruddy gloss of her hair and the clear brilliance of her skin. When she had finished dressing she looked at herself in the mirror with frank delight. Lucinda was not vain, but she was quite well aware of the fact of her beauty and took an impersonal pleasure in it, as if she were looking at some finely painted picture by a master hand.
The form and face reflected in the glass satisfied her. The puffs and draperies of the green voile displayed to perfection the full, but not overfull, curves of her fine figure. Lucinda lifted her arm and touched a red rose to her lips with the hand upon which shone the frosty glitter of Romney’s diamond, looking at the graceful slope of her shoulder and the splendid line of chin and throat with critical approval.
She noted, too, how well the gown became her eyes, bringing out all the deeper colour in them. Lucinda had magnificent eyes. Once Romney had written a sonnet to them in which he compared their colour to ripe blueberries. This may not sound poetical to you unless you know or remember just what the tints of ripe blueberries are — dusky purple in some lights, clear slate in others, and yet again in others the misty hue of early meadow violets.
“You really look very well,” remarked the real Lucinda to the mirrored Lucinda. “Nobody would think you were an old maid. But you are. Alice Penhallow, who is to be married tonight, was a child of five when you thought of being married fifteen years ago. That makes you an old maid, my dear. Well, it is your own fault, and it will continue to be your own fault, you stubborn offshoot of a stubborn breed!”
She flung her train out straight and pulled on her gloves.
“I do hope I won’t get any spots on this dress tonight,” she reflected. “It will have to do me for a gala dress for a year at least — and I have a creepy conviction that it is fearfully spottable. Bless Uncle Mark’s good, uncalculating heart! How I would have detested it if he had given me something sensible and useful and ugly — as Aunt Emilia would have done.”
They all went to “young” John Penhallow’s at early moonrise. Lucinda drove over the two miles of hill and dale with a youthful second cousin, by name, Carey Penhallow. The wedding was quite a brilliant affair. Lucinda seemed to pervade the social atmosphere, and everywhere she went a little ripple of admiration trailed after her like a wave. She was undeniably a belle, yet she found herself feeling faintly bored and was rather glad than otherwise when the guests began to fray off.
“I’m afraid I’m losing my capacity for enjoyment,” she thought, a little drearily. “Yes, I must be growing old. That is what it means when social functions begin to bore you.”
It was that unlucky Mrs. George who blundered again. She was standing on the veranda when Carey Penhallow dashed up.
“Tell Lucinda that I can’t take her back to the Grange. I have to drive Mark and Cissy Penhallow to Bright River to catch the two o’clock express. There will be plenty of chances for her with the others.”
At this moment George Penhallow, holding his rearing horse with difficulty, shouted for his wife. Mrs. George, all in a flurry, dashed back into the still crowded hall. Exactly to whom she gave her message was never known to any of the Penhallows. But a tall, ruddy-haired girl, dressed in pale green organdy — Anne Shirley from Avonlea — told Marilla Cuthbert and Rachel Lynde as a joke the next morning how a chubby little woman in a bright pink fascinator had clutched her by the arm, and gasped out: “Carey Penhallow can’t take you — he says you’re to look out for someone else,” and was gone before she could answer or turn around.
Thus it was that Lucinda, when she came out to the veranda step, found herself unaccountably deserted. All the Grange Penhallows were gone; Lucinda realized this after a few moments of bewildered seeking, and she understood that if she were to get to the Grange that night she must walk. Plainly there was nobody to take her.
Lucinda was angry. It is not pleasant to find yourself forgotten and neglected. It is still less pleasant to walk home alone along a country road, at one o’clock in the morning, wearing a pale green voile. Lucinda was not prepared for such a walk. She had nothing on her feet save thin-soled shoes, and her only wraps were a flimsy fascinator and a short coat.
“What a guy I shall look, stalking home alone in this rig,” she thought crossly.
There was no help for it, unless she confessed her plight to some of the stranger guests and begged a drive home. Lucinda’s pride scorned such a request and the
