“I suppose so,” agreed Phil dolefully.  “Well”—­brightening up—­“if he won’t ask me to marry him I’ll ask him, that’s all.  So it’s bound to come right.  I won’t worry.  By the way, Gilbert Blythe is going about constantly with Christine Stuart.  Did you know?”

Anne was trying to fasten a little gold chain about her throat.  She suddenly found the clasp difficult to manage.  What was the matter with it—­or with her fingers?

“No,” she said carelessly.  “Who is Christine Stuart?”

“Ronald Stuart’s sister.  She’s in Kingsport this winter studying music.  I haven’t seen her, but they say she’s very pretty and that Gilbert is quite crazy over her.  How angry I was when you refused Gilbert, Anne.  But Roy Gardner was foreordained for you.  I can see that now.  You were right, after all.”

Anne did not blush, as she usually did when the girls assumed that her eventual marriage to Roy Gardner was a settled thing.  All at once she felt rather dull.  Phil’s chatter seemed trivial and the reception a bore.  She boxed poor Rusty’s ears.

“Get off that cushion instantly, you cat, you!  Why don’t you stay down where you belong?”

Anne picked up her orchids and went downstairs, where Aunt Jamesina was presiding over a row of coats hung before the fire to warm.  Roy Gardner was waiting for Anne and teasing the Sarah-cat while he waited.  The Sarah-cat did not approve of him.  She always turned her back on him.  But everybody else at Patty’s Place liked him very much.  Aunt Jamesina, carried away by his unfailing and deferential courtesy, and the pleading tones of his delightful voice, declared he was the nicest young man she ever knew, and that Anne was a very fortunate girl.  Such remarks made Anne restive.  Roy’s wooing had certainly been as romantic as girlish heart could desire, but—­she wished Aunt Jamesina and the girls would not take things so for granted.  When Roy murmured a poetical compliment as he helped her on with her coat, she did not blush and thrill as usual; and he found her rather silent in their brief walk to Redmond.  He thought she looked a little pale when she came out of the coeds’ dressing room; but as they entered the reception room her color and sparkle suddenly returned to her.  She turned to Roy with her gayest expression.  He smiled back at her with what Phil called “his deep, black, velvety smile.”  Yet she really did not see Roy at all.  She was acutely conscious that Gilbert was standing under the palms just across the room talking to a girl who must be Christine Stuart.

She was very handsome, in the stately style destined to become rather massive in middle life.  A tall girl, with large dark-blue eyes, ivory outlines, and a gloss of darkness on her smooth hair.

“She looks just as I’ve always wanted to look,” thought Anne miserably.  “Rose-leaf complexion—­starry violet eyes—­raven hair—­yes, she has them all.  It’s a wonder her name isn’t Cordelia Fitzgerald into the bargain!  But I don’t believe her figure is as good as mine, and her nose certainly isn’t.”