Oh, joy!  Oh, happy day!  He knew.  He had seen it as I saw it.  He had come to gain Father’s permission, that he might be a duly accredited suitor for my hand!

During the next ecstatic ten minutes, with my hand pressed against my wildly beating heart, I planned my wedding dress, selected with care and discrimination my trousseau, furnished the rose-embowered cottage far from the madding crowd—­and wondered why Father did not send for me.  Then the slam of the screen door downstairs sent me to the window, a sickening terror within me,

Was he going—­without seeing me, his future bride?  Impossible!

Father and Mr. Harold Hartshorn stood on the front steps below, talking.  In another minute Mr. Harold Hartshorn had walked away, and Father had turned back on to the piazza.

As soon as I could control my shaking knees, I went downstairs.

Father was in his favorite rocking-chair.  I advanced slowly.  I did not sit down.

“Was that Mr. Hartshorn?” I asked, trying to keep the shake out of my voice.

“Yes.”

“Mr. H-Hartshorn,” I repeated stupidly.

“Yes.  He came to see me about the Downer place,” nodded Father.  “He wants to rent it for next year.”

“To rent it—­the Downer place!” (The Downer place was no rose-embowered cottage far from the madding crowd!  Why, it was big, and brick, and right next to the hotel!  I didn’t want to live there.)

“Yes—­for his wife and family.  He’s going to bring them back with him next year,” explained Father.

“His wife and family!” I can imagine about how I gasped out those four words.

“Yes.  He has five children, I believe, and—­”

But I had fled to my room.

After all, my recovery was rapid.  I was in love with love, you see; not with Mr. Harold Hartshorn.  Besides, the next year I went to college.  And it was while I was at college that I met Jerry.

Jerry was the brother of my college friend, Helen Weston.  Helen’s elder sister was a senior in that same college, and was graduated at the close of my freshman year.  The father, mother, and brother came on to the graduation.  And that is where I met Jerry.

If it might be called meeting him.  He lifted his hat, bowed, said a polite nothing with his lips, and an indifferent “Oh, some friend of Helen’s,” with his eyes, and turned to a radiant blonde senior at my side.

And that was all—­for him.  But for me—­

All that day I watched him whenever opportunity offered; and I suspect that I took care that opportunity offered frequently.  I was fascinated.  I had never seen any one like him before.  Tall, handsome, brilliant, at perfect ease, he plainly dominated every group of which he was a part.  Toward him every face was turned—­yet he never seemed to know it. (Whatever his faults, Jerry is not conceited.  I will give him credit for that!) To me he did not speak again that day.  I am not sure that he even looked at me.  If he did there must still have been in his eyes only the “Oh, some friend of Helen’s,” that I had seen at the morning introduction.