After dinner Cherry and Martin, in all the ecstatic first delight of recognized love, went out to the wide front porch, where there were wicker chairs, under the rose vines.  Alix alone laughed at them as they went.  Anne, with a storm in her heart, played noisily on the piano, and the doctor, after giving the doorway where Cherry had disappeared a wistful look, restlessly took to his armchair and his book, in such desolation of spirit as he had not known since the dark day of her mother’s death.

The next day Alix and the engaged pair walked up to invite Peter to a tennis foursome on the old Blithedale court.  It was a Saturday, and as he usually dined with them, or asked them to dine with him on Saturday, they were not surprised to find him busy with a charcoal burner, under the trees, compounding a marvellous dish of chicken, tomatoes, cream, and mushrooms, or to have his first words a caution not to tip things over if they wanted any dinner.  His Chinese cook was hovering about, but Peter himself was chef.

“Stop your messing one second!” Alix said, catching him by the arm.  And as he straightened up she added, with a little awkward laugh, “Congratulate these creatures—­they—­they’re going to be married!  Why don’t you congratulate them!”

Peter gave one long look at Martin and Cherry, who stood laughing, but a little confused and self-conscious, too, in the grassy path.  With a shock like death in his heart, he realized that it was all over.  Their protection of her, their suspicions, had come too late.  Blind child that she was, she was committed to this fascinating and mysterious adventure.

His face grew dark with a sudden rush of blood.  “Peter hates to have any one else know a thing before he does!” Alix explained this later.  But he went to them quickly, and shook hands with Martin, and was presently reproaching Cherry for her secretiveness in his old, or almost his old, way.

“Of course nobody’s to know—­Dad insisted on that!” said Cherry’s soft, proud little voice.

“Did you suspect yesterday, Peter?” Alix asked, tasting the sauce, and bunching her fingers immediately afterward to send a rapturous kiss into the air as an indication of its deliciousness.  “Yesterday when they went off after the tree, I mean?”

“I had my own suspicions!” he returned, and Cherry—­his little, gay, lovely Cherry!—­laughed happily.  He arranged that they were to play the tennis here on his own courts, and later dine with him, but under his hospitality and under the golden beauty of the day it was all pain—­pain—­pain.  It was agony to see her with him, beginning to taste the rapture of love given and returned; it was agony to have the conversation return always to Martin and Cherry, to the first love affair.  When they wandered away to the brook, and stood talking, the girl’s head dropped, her cheek flushed, but her face raised quickly now and then for a flashing look, Peter felt that he could have killed this newcomer, this thief, this usurper of the place that he himself might have filled.