lly was. The two
women were wont to talk animatedly to each other, and Cecily had many
things to tell Lucy Ellen. She did not tell them. Neither did Lucy
Ellen ask any questions, her ill-concealed excitement hanging around
her like a festal garment.

Cecily's heart was on fire with alarm and jealousy. She smiled a
little cruelly as she buttered and ate her toast.

"And so that was Cromwell Biron," she said with studied carelessness.
"I thought there was something familiar about him. When did he come
home?"

"He got to Oriental yesterday," fluttered back Lucy Ellen. "He's going
to be home for two months. We--we had such an interesting talk this
afternoon. He--he's as full of jokes as ever. I wished you'd been
here."

This was a fib. Cecily knew it.

"I don't, then," she said contemptuously. "You know I never had much
use for Cromwell Biron. I think he had a face of his own to come down
here to see you uninvited, after the way he treated you."

Lucy Ellen blushed scorchingly and was miserably silent.

"He's changed terrible in his looks," went on Cecily relentlessly.
"How bald he's got--and fat! To think of the spruce Cromwell Biron got
to be bald and fat! To be sure, he still has the same sheepish
expression. Will you pass me the currant jell, Lucy Ellen?"

"I don't think he's so very fat," she said resentfully, when Cecily
had left the table. "And I don't care if he is."

Twenty years before this, Biron had jilted Lucy Ellen Foster. She was
the prettiest girl in Oriental then, but the new school teacher over
at the Crossways was prettier, with a dash of piquancy, which Lucy
Ellen lacked, into the bargain. Cromwell and the school teacher had
run away and been married, and Lucy Ellen was left to pick up the
tattered shreds of her poor romance as best she could.

She never had another lover. She told herself that she would always be
faithful to the one love of her life. This sounded romantic, and she
found a certain comfort in it.

She had been brought up by her uncle and aunt. When they died she and
her cousin, Cecily Foster, found themselves, except for each other,
alone in the world.

Cecily loved Lucy Ellen as a sister. But she believed that Lucy Ellen
would yet marry, and her heart sank at the prospect of being left
without a soul to love and care for.

It was Lucy Ellen that had first proposed their mutual promise, but
Cecily had grasped at it eagerly. The two women, verging on decisive
old maidenho