When Alec came home at noon I saw him scanning my impassive face, for I had not been crying since the night before, and the trace of tears was gone. After our regular Saturday boiled dinner he asked me to come into the sitting-room. He closed the doors carefully and sat down beside me on the couch. I wished he wouldn't take my hand for it was chapped and red, and of course he had held hers, for which he had bought the beautiful ring in the little blue velvet box, and hers would be soft and white. I drew mine away. Alec talked to me gently and told me about the arrangements. I heard him say with a dull shock, that they would be married in the early fall. I remember wondering how they had decided such details in the course of ten days. I soon discovered that they had managed to go over the whole ground. There seemed to be no question undecided, no points untouched. Ruth, he said, would start in at boarding-school in the fall; the twins of course would continue at college and their vacations would, as usual, be spent at home. He repeated what I already very well knew that after the twins graduated they would probably go out West and start into one of Tom's lumber camps. "So there'll just be me left," I hurried to say, kind of to help him out. "And, of course, _you'll_ live right along here with us," he said, "except, once in a while, when Tom and Elise want you there with them." "I'm worse to dispose of than a mother-in-law," I half laughed, sorry in a moment that I had spoken so, for Alec looked hurt, and exclaimed, "Oh, Bobbie dear!" "Oh, I'll try, Alec, I really will," I reassured him, for Alec always brings out the best in me. "And go and see Edith very soon?" he said, following me up cruelly. "She'll be expecting you." "Oh, yes, I'll try," I murmured, biting my trembling under lip. "Good girl! I knew I could count on you. You'll like Edith," he said. "And she wants to be awfully kind to you and Ruth. I know you'll try and make it easy for her, Bobbie," he added, and left me as cheerfully as a summer's breeze. Late that afternoon, about five I think, I started out for a walk in Buxton's woods, a quarter of a mile back of our house. I hadn't been gone very long when I heard a step behind me, and turning around I saw, mounted on her stunning black Kentucky thoroughbred, Edith Campbell, coming toward me. I wanted to run away, to hide perhaps behind a tree and let her pass, but I couldn't for she had caught sight of me.