much. There will be only Mother and Baby and I left now. Our
family circle has dwindled woefully."

"Mother and Baby and you!" Selwyn felt his head whirling again. "Why,
where is Tom?"

He felt that it was an idiotic question, but it slipped from his
tongue before he could catch it. Esme turned her head and looked at
him wonderingly. He knew that in the sunlight her eyes were as mistily
blue as early meadow violets, but here they looked dark and
unfathomably tender.

"Tom?" she said perplexedly. "Do you mean Tom St. Clair? He is here,
of course, he and his wife. Didn't you see her? That pretty woman in
pale pink, Lil Meredith. Why, you used to know Lil, didn't you? One of
the Uxbridge Merediths?"

To the day of his death Selwyn Grant will firmly believe that if he
had not clutched fast hold of the top bar of the gate he would have
tumbled down on the moss under the beeches in speechless astonishment.
All the surprises of that surprising evening were as nothing to this.
He had a swift conviction that there were no words in the English
language that could fully express his feelings and that it would be a
waste of time to try to find any. Therefore he laid hold of the first
baldly commonplace ones that came handy and said tamely, "I thought
you were married to Tom."

"You--thought--I--was--married--to--Tom!" repeated Esme slowly. "And
have you thought _that_ all these years, Selwyn Grant?"

"Yes, I have. Is it any wonder? You were engaged to Tom when I went
away, Jenny told me you were. And a year later Bertha wrote me a
letter in which she made some reference to Tom's marriage. She didn't
say to _whom_, but hadn't I the right to suppose it was to you?"

"Oh!" The word was partly a sigh and partly a little cry of
long-concealed, long-denied pain. "It's been all a funny
misunderstanding. Tom and I _were_ engaged once--a boy-and-girl affair
in the beginning. Then we both found out that we had made a
mistake--that what we had thought was love was merely the affection of
good comrades. We broke our engagement shortly before you went away.
All the older girls knew it was broken but I suppose nobody mentioned
the matter to Jen. She was such a child, we never thought about her.
And you've thought I was Tom's wife all this time? It's--funny."

"Funny. You mean tragic! Look here, Esme, I'm not going to risk any
more misunderstanding. There's nothing for it but plain talk when
matters get to such a state as this. I love yo