“It’s impossible!” I said blankly.

“It’s really true,” said Wilhelmina, delighted at this development, as she supposed it, of my romance.  “I was up to see Mrs. Maxwell last night, and I met him.”

“It—­can’t be—­the same—­Cecil Fenwick,” I said faintly, because I had to say something.

“Oh, yes, it is.  He belongs in Blakely, New Brunswick, and he’s a lawyer, and he’s been out West twenty-two years.  He’s oh! so handsome, and just as you described him, except that his hair is quite gray.  He has never married—­I asked Mrs. Maxwell—­so you see he has never forgotten you, Miss Holmes.  And, oh, I believe everything is going to come out all right.”

I couldn’t exactly share her cheerful belief.  Everything seemed to me to be coming out most horribly wrong.  I was so mixed up I didn’t know what to do or say.  I felt as if I were in a bad dream—­it must be a dream—­there couldn’t really be a Cecil Fenwick!  My feelings were simply indescribable.  Fortunately every one put my agitation down to quite a different cause, and they very kindly left me alone to recover myself.  I shall never forget that awful afternoon.  Right after tea I excused myself and went home as fast as I could go.  There I shut myself up in my room, but not to write poetry in my blank book.  No, indeed!  I felt in no poetical mood.

I tried to look the facts squarely in the face.  There was a Cecil Fenwick, extraordinary as the coincidence was, and he was here in Avonlea.  All my friends—­and foes—­believed that he was the estranged lover of my youth.  If he stayed long in Avonlea, one of two things was bound to happen.  He would hear the story I had told about him and deny it, and I would be held up to shame and derision for the rest of my natural life; or else he would simply go away in ignorance, and everybody would suppose he had forgotten me and would pity me maddeningly.  The latter possibility was bad enough, but it wasn’t to be compared to the former; and oh, how I prayed—­yes, I did pray about it—­that he would go right away.  But Providence had other views for me.

Cecil Fenwick didn’t go away.  He stayed right on in Avonlea, and the Maxwells blossomed out socially in his honor and tried to give him a good time.  Mrs. Maxwell gave a party for him.  I got a card—­but you may be very sure I didn’t go, although Nancy thought I was crazy not to.  Then every one else gave parties in honor of Mr. Fenwick and I was invited and never went.  Wilhelmina Mercer came and pleaded and scolded and told me if I avoided Mr. Fenwick like that he would think I still cherished bitterness against him, and he wouldn’t make any advances towards a reconciliation.  Wilhelmina means well, but she hasn’t a great deal of sense.

Cecil Fenwick seemed to be a great favorite with everybody, young and old.  He was very rich, too, and Wilhelmina declared that half the girls were after him.