As she was very thin and tall, her secret choice had fallen on her exact opposite, a neighboring widower about fifty, who was rather short and very stout, and had recently come into a fortune by selling some valuable coal-lands in Greenbrier county. Miss Tuttle having been in love with neighbor Bennett when he was in moderate circumstances, only loved him the harder when he became so rich that he did not know how to spend his money. Some neighborly kindnesses he had certainly shown her, but not as many as she wished, and no amount of scheming had sufficed to bring him to the point of proposing. Thus absorbed in her own love-affair, it was no wonder that Miss Tuttle paid small attention to Leola’s comings and goings, regarding her still as a pretty child who had heretofore laughed at love and lovers. So there were none to molest the lovers and make them afraid, for Wizard Hermann, though he did not give over his scheme, held his peace and went his way in cunning silence, giving Leola time to get over her fright. Even Doctor Barnes, who had not found it necessary to pay but three visits to his patient, did not know of the romance going on at the cottage, and being very busy with the measles, just then epidemic in Alderson and the country round about, he had no time to gossip about the stranger whose life Leola Mead had saved. As there were none who knew Ray Chester, so there were none to worry over him; and beneath the matronly chaperonage of kind Widow Gray their secret love bloomed into a splendid flower whose strong roots only death could tear away. “I love you, sweet: how can you ever learn How much I love you?” “You I love even so, And so I learn it.” “Sweet, you cannot know How fair you are.” “If fair enough to earn Your love, so much is all my hour’s concern.” “My love grows hourly, sweet!” “Mine, too, doth grow, Yet love seemed full so many hours ago.” The lovers speak till kisses claim their turn. “It cannot surely be a whole week; was it not only yesterday?” cried the doting lover. But Leola counted off the days to him on her rosy fingers. “It was Tuesday when first we met--Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and now it is Tuesday again! And I have been to see you twice every day, Ray! But to-morrow I cannot come at all, for there is a horrid picnic to which Miss Tuttle insists on taking me, and I cannot refuse lest she find me out.” “Why, then, I shall go to the picnic, too. I adore picnics!” cried Ray Chester. “But you are not invited. It’s a Sunday school picnic, you see, Ray, and you are not acquainted with anybody.” “I’ll invite myself, and get acquainted with everybody there in less than an hour,” he answered, gayly; and calling to Mrs. Gray, who was watering her geraniums in the yard, he said: “Aren’t you going to the picnic to-morrow?”