“No,” I said, finding my voice with a gasp, “you mustn’t go until you’ve heard the truth.  It’s dreadful enough, but not as dreadful as you might otherwise think.  Those—­those stories—­I have a confession to make.  I did tell them, but I didn’t know there was such a person as Cecil Fenwick in existence.”

He looked puzzled, as well he might.  Then he smiled, took my hand and led me away from the door—­to the knob of which I was still holding with all my might—­to the sofa.

“Let’s sit down and talk it over ‘comfy,’” he said.

I just confessed the whole shameful business.  It was terribly humiliating, but it served me right.  I told him how people were always twitting me for never having had a beau, and how I had told them I had; and then I showed him the porous plaster advertisement.

He heard me right through without a word, and then he threw back his big, curly, gray head and laughed.

“This clears up a great many mysterious hints I’ve been receiving ever since I came to Avonlea,” he said, “and finally a Mrs. Gilbert came to my sister this afternoon with a long farrago of nonsense about the love affair I had once had with some Charlotte Holmes here.  She declared you had told her about it yourself.  I confess I flamed up.  I’m a peppery chap, and I thought—­I thought—­oh, confound it, it might as well out:  I thought you were some lank old maid who was amusing herself telling ridiculous stories about me.  When you came into the room I knew that, whoever was to blame, you were not.”

“But I was,” I said ruefully.  “It wasn’t right of me to tell such a story—­and it was very silly, too.  But who would ever have supposed that there could be real Cecil Fenwick who had lived in Blakely?  I never heard of such a coincidence.”

“It’s more than a coincidence,” said Mr. Fenwick decidedly.  “It’s predestination; that is what it is.  And now let’s forget it and talk of something else.”

We talked of something else—­or at least Mr. Fenwick did, for I was too ashamed to say much—­so long that Nancy got restive and clumped through the hall every five minutes; but Mr. Fenwick never took the hint.  When he finally went away he asked if he might come again.

“It’s time we made up that old quarrel, you know,” he said, laughing.

And I, an old maid of forty, caught myself blushing like a girl.  But I felt like a girl, for it was such a relief to have that explanation all over.  I couldn’t even feel angry with Adella Gilbert.  She was always a mischief maker, and when a woman is born that way she is more to be pitied than blamed.  I wrote a poem in the blank book before I went to sleep; I hadn’t written anything for a month, and it was lovely to be at it once more.

Mr. Fenwick did come again—­the very next evening, but one.  And he came so often after that that even Nancy got resigned to him.  One day I had to tell her something.  I shrank from doing it, for I feared it would make her feel badly.