“I’d put John Moore at the head of the table if I were you, Molly Carter, because he’s about the only man you’ve invited that has got any sense left since you and that Clinton girl took to going about Hillsboro.  He’s a host of steadiness in himself, and the way he ignores all you women, who would run after him if he would let you, shows what he is.  He has my full confidence,” and as she delivered herself of this judgment of Dr. John, Mrs. Johnson drove in all the corks tight and began to pound spice.

“He’s not out of the widower-woods yet, Caroline,” said Aunt Bettie with her most speculative smile.  “I have about decided on him for Ruth since the judge has taken to following Molly about as bad as Billy Moore does.  But don’t any of you say a word, for John’s very timid, and I don’t believe, in spite of all these years, he’s had a single notion yet.  He doesn’t see a woman as anything but a patient at the end of a spoon, and mighty kind and gentle he does the dosing of them, too.  Just the other day—­dearie me, Jane, what has boiled over now?” And in the excitement that ensued I escaped to the garden.

Yes, Aunt Bettie is right about Dr. John; he doesn’t see a woman, and there is no way to make him.  What she had said about it made me realise that he had always been like that, and I told myself that there was no reason in the world why my heart should beat in my slippers on that account.  Still I don’t see why Ruth Clinton should have her head literally thrown against that stone wall, and I wish Aunt Bettie wouldn’t.  It seemed like a desecration even to try to match-make him, and it made me hot with indignation all over.  I dug so fiercely at the roots of my phlox with a trowel I had picked up that they groaned so loud I could almost hear them.  I felt as if I must operate on something.  And it was in this mood that Alfred’s letter found me.

It had a surprise in it, and I sat back on the grass and read it with my heart beating like a hammer.  He was leaving Paris the day he had posted it, and he was due to arrive in London almost as soon as it did, just any hour now I calculated in a flash.  And “from London immediately to Hillsboro” he had written in words that fairly sung themselves off the paper.  I was frightened—­so frightened that the letter shook in my hands, and with only the thought of being sure that I might be alone for a few minutes with it, I fled to the garret.

Surely no woman ever in all the world read such a letter as that, and no wonder my breath almost failed me.  It was a love-letter in which the cold paper was turned into a heart that beat against mine, and I bowed my head over it as I wetted it with tears.  I knew then that I had taken his coming back lightly; had fussed over it and been silly-proud of it; while not really caring at all.  All that awful reducing my waist measure seemed just a lack of confidence in his love for me; he wouldn’t have minded if I weighed five hundred pounds, I felt sure.  He loved me—­really, really, really; and I had sat and weighed him with a lot of men who were nothing more than amused by my chatter, or taken with my beauty, and who wouldn’t have known such love if it were shown to them through a telescope.