That her son should ever cast eyes of love on any girl was something Thyra had never thought about.  She would not believe it possible that he should love any one but herself, who loved him so much.  And now the possibility invaded her mind as subtly and coldly and remorselessly as a sea-fog stealing landward.

Chester had been born to her at an age when most women are letting their children slip from them into the world, with some natural tears and heartaches, but content to let them go, after enjoying their sweetest years.  Thyra’s late-come motherhood was all the more intense and passionate because of its very lateness.  She had been very ill when her son was born, and had lain helpless for long weeks, during which other women had tended her baby for her.  She had never been able to forgive them for this.

Her husband had died before Chester was a year old.  She had laid their son in his dying arms and received him back again with a last benediction.  To Thyra that moment had something of a sacrament in it.  It was as if the child had been doubly given to her, with a right to him solely that nothing could take away or transcend.

Marrying!  She had never thought of it in connection with him.  He did not come of a marrying race.  His father had been sixty when he had married her, Thyra Lincoln, likewise well on in life.  Few of the Lincolns or Carewes had married young, many not at all.  And, to her, Chester was her baby still.  He belonged solely to her.

And now another woman had dared to look upon him with eyes of love.  Damaris Garland!  Thyra now remembered seeing her.  She was a new-comer in Avonlea, having come to live with her uncle and aunt after the death of her mother.  Thyra had met her on the bridge one day a month previously.  Yes, a man might think she was pretty—­a low-browed girl, with a wave of reddish-gold hair, and crimson lips blossoming out against the strange, milk-whiteness of her skin.  Her eyes, too—­Thyra recalled them—­ hazel in tint, deep, and laughter-brimmed.

The girl had gone past her with a smile that brought out many dimples.  There was a certain insolent quality in her beauty, as if it flaunted itself somewhat too defiantly in the beholder’s eye.  Thyra had turned and looked after the lithe, young creature, wondering who she might be.

And to-night, while she, his mother, waited for him in darkness and loneliness, he was down at Blair’s, talking to this girl!  He loved her; and it was past doubt that she loved him.  The thought was more bitter than death to Thyra.  That she should dare!  Her anger was all against the girl.  She had laid a snare to get Chester and he, like a fool, was entangled in it, thinking, man-fashion, only of her great eyes and red lips.  Thyra thought savagely of Damaris’ beauty.

“She shall not have him,” she said, with slow emphasis.  “I will never give him up to any other woman, and, least of all, to her.  She would leave me no place in his heart at all—­me, his mother, who almost died to give him life.  He belongs to me!  Let her look for the son of some other woman—­some woman who has many sons.  She shall not have my only one!”