l all the desires of our hearts--because our prince is there.
YOU should have had your palace really, though--you are so beautiful.
You MUST let me say it--it has to be said--I'm nearly bursting with
admiration. You are the loveliest thing I ever saw, Mrs. Moore."

"If we are to be friends you must call me Leslie," said the other with
an odd passion.

"Of course I will. And MY friends call me Anne."

"I suppose I am beautiful," Leslie went on, looking stormily out to
sea. "I hate my beauty. I wish I had always been as brown and plain
as the brownest and plainest girl at the fishing village over there.
Well, what do you think of Miss Cornelia?"

The abrupt change of subject shut the door on any further confidences.

"Miss Cornelia is a darling, isn't she?" said Anne. "Gilbert and I
were invited to her house to a state tea last week. You've heard of
groaning tables."

"I seem to recall seeing the expression in the newspaper reports of
weddings," said Leslie, smiling.

"Well, Miss Cornelia's groaned--at least, it creaked--positively. You
couldn't have believed she would have cooked so much for two ordinary
people. She had every kind of pie you could name, I think--except
lemon pie. She said she had taken the prize for lemon pies at the
Charlottetown Exhibition ten years ago and had never made any since for
fear of losing her reputation for them."

"Were you able to eat enough pie to please her?"

"_I_ wasn't. Gilbert won her heart by eating--I won't tell you how
much. She said she never knew a man who didn't like pie better than
his Bible. Do you know, I love Miss Cornelia."

"So do I," said Leslie. "She is the best friend I have in the world."

Anne wondered secretly why, if this were so, Miss Cornelia had never
mentioned Mrs. Dick Moore to her. Miss Cornelia had certainly talked
freely about every other individual in or near Four Winds.

"Isn't that beautiful?" said Leslie, after a brief silence, pointing to
the exquisite effect of a shaft of light falling through a cleft in the
rock behind them, across a dark green pool at its base. "If I had come
here--and seen nothing but just that--I would go home satisfied."

"The effects of light and shadow all along these shores are wonderful,"
agreed Anne. "My little sewing room looks out on the harbor, and I sit
at its window and feast my eyes. The colors and shadows are never the
same two minutes together."

"And you are never lonely?" asked Les