“What else?”

“You remember he called here once.”

“Yes, Lucy, to ask you to sing at the school entertainment.”

“Mother, it was for more than that.  You did not hear him speak at the door.  He said, ‘I shall count on you; you cannot disappoint me.’  You did not hear his voice, mother.”

“What else, Lucy?”

“Once, one night last winter, when I was coming home from the post-office, it was after dark, and he walked way to the house with me, and he told me a lot about himself.  He told me how all alone in the world he was, and how hard it was for a man to have nobody who really belonged to him in the wide world, and when he said good-night at the gate he held my hand—­quite a while; he did, mother.”

“What else, Lucy?”

“You remember that picnic, the trolley picnic to Alford.  He sat next to me coming home, and—­”

“And what?”

“There were only—­four on the seat, and he—­he sat very close, and told me some more about himself:  how he had been alone ever since he was a little boy, and—­how hard it had been.  Then he asked how long ago father died, and if I remembered, and if I missed him still.”

“I don’t quite understand, dear, how that—­”

“You didn’t hear the way he spoke, mother.”

“What else, Lucy?”

“He has always looked at me very much across the church, and whenever I have met him it has not been so much what—­he said as—­his manner.  You have not known what his manner was, and you have not heard how he spoke, nor seen his eyes when—­he looked at me—­”

“Yes, dear, you are right.  I have not.  Then you have thought he was in love with you?”

“Sometimes he has made me think so, mother,” Lucy sobbed.

Mrs. Ayres gazed pitifully at the girl.  “Then when you thought perhaps he was not you felt badly.”

“Oh, mother!”

“You were not yourself.”

“Oh, mother!”

Mrs. Ayres took the girl by her two slender shoulders; she bent her merciful, loving face close to the younger one, distraught, and full of longing, primeval passion.  “Lucy,” she whispered, “your mother never lost sight of—­anything.”

Lucy turned deadly white.  She stared back at her mother.

“You thought perhaps he was in love with Miss Farrel, didn’t you?” Mrs. Ayres said, in a very low whisper.

Lucy nodded, still staring with eyes of horrified inquiry at her mother.

“You had seen him with her?”

“Ever so many times, walking, and he took her to ride, and I saw him coming out of the hotel.  I thought—­”

“Listen, Lucy.”  Mrs. Ayres’s whisper was hardly audible.  “Mother made some candy and sent it to Miss Farrel.  She—­never had any that anybody else made.  It—­was candy that would not hurt anybody that she had.”

Lucy’s face lightened as if with some veritable illumination.

“Mother perhaps ought not to have let you think—­as you did, so long,” said Mrs. Ayres, “but she thought perhaps it was best, and, Lucy, mother has begun to realize that it was.  Now you think, perhaps, he is in love with this other girl, don’t you?”