“I lived well at Judith Dow’s those last ten days,—ice-cream every night and as much real clear coffee as I could drink; and Mr. Dow brought home three reserved-seat tickets to a Boston Symphony concert, but there was a blizzard that night and the electrics got fouled, so we didn’t get there, which was probably lucky, as I now firmly believe he found the tickets in the street, or else in the museum, and the owner might have faced us down. “Judith helped me with my shopping, and I was ready even to my bonnet (yes, that very one lying annihilated over there) the last week of March. James wrote that he would be on by the first week of April, and he was, the first _day_, as it chanced. It was just before supper that night when Judith came running up all those three flights of stairs and only had strength left to say ‘they’ve come,’ and ask me wouldn’t I rather meet James alone before they all came in to tea, adding that her little niece was very weary and so she had gone to bed. I thought Judith looked rather queer and pale, but I laid it to the stairs and a weak heart, and having my new blue waist on, I went straight down. “Judith opened the door of the parlour to let me pass, but as there was nobody in it but a lean old man with a loose, close-shaven upper lip and chin whiskers, I backed out again, thinkin’ she’d made a mistake, and James was in the livin’ room where we ate; but she held the door, and I said, thinking she didn’t notice, ‘Mr. White isn’t here!’ “‘Yes, he is,’ said she; ‘James, this is Keith West, your affianced!’ “‘You’re not James White!’ I said, getting as cold as clams, ‘I have his picture; he is dark, and stout, and personable, with a heavy beard, and but a little turned of fifty!’ “‘So I was, twenty years ago, when that picture was took,’ said the horrid old man, grinning and wobbling his chin as he came forward, and before I knew what he was doing he put his arm around my waist. “‘How dared you both lie to me so!’ I cried, turning to Judith. “‘I didn’t send you any picture; it was sister,’ said he. “‘I didn’t lie—you deceived yourself, you never asked when the picture was taken! You are fifty and he was a grown man when you were in the primary,’ said Judith, sharp as a knife. And when I came to think of it I never had thought of this, or worked out his age. “‘Give me back my money and I’ll leave this house to-night!’ I said, but even then Judith persuaded me to sleep over it and that things might look differently in the morning. “They did—only worse—for that night one of the oldest boarders, a third cousin of theirs, crept in and told me that James White was already four times a widower, his farm being in a feverish sort of country, and that the girl—belonging to his second wife—who had come with him was really twenty, though she had never grown since she was ten, and had epileptic fits.