own.

Anne roused herself from her dreams, thinking it would only be tactful
to take her departure. Ludovic was courting Theodora. Everyone in
Grafton knew that, or, if anyone were in ignorance of the fact, it was
not because he had not had time to find out. Ludovic had been coming
down that lane to see Theodora, in the same ruminating, unhastening
fashion, for fifteen years!

When Anne, who was slim and girlish and romantic, rose to go, Theodora,
who was plump and middle-aged and practical, said, with a twinkle in her
eye:

"There isn't any hurry, child. Sit down and have your call out. You've
seen Ludovic coming down the lane, and, I suppose, you think you'll be a
crowd. But you won't. Ludovic rather likes a third person around, and
so do I. It spurs up the conversation as it were. When a man has been
coming to see you straight along, twice a week for fifteen years, you
get rather talked out by spells."

Theodora never pretended to bashfulness where Ludovic was concerned.
She was not at all shy of referring to him and his dilatory courtship.
Indeed, it seemed to amuse her.

Anne sat down again and together they watched Ludovic coming down the
lane, gazing calmly about him at the lush clover fields and the blue
loops of the river winding in and out of the misty valley below.

Anne looked at Theodora's placid, finely-moulded face and tried to
imagine what she herself would feel like if she were sitting there,
waiting for an elderly lover who had, seemingly, taken so long to make
up his mind. But even Anne's imagination failed her for this.

"Anyway," she thought, impatiently, "if I wanted him I think I'd find
some way of hurrying him up. Ludovic SPEED! Was there ever such a misfit
of a name? Such a name for such a man is a delusion and a snare."

Presently Ludovic got to the house, but stood so long on the doorstep
in a brown study, gazing into the tangled green boskage of the cherry
orchard, that Theodora finally went and opened the door before he
knocked. As she brought him into the sitting-room she made a comical
grimace at Anne over his shoulder.

Ludovic smiled pleasantly at Anne. He liked her; she was the only young
girl he knew, for he generally avoided young girls--they made him feel
awkward and out of place. But Anne did not affect him in this fashion.
She had a way of getting on with all sorts of people, and, although they
had not known her very long, both Ludovic and Theodora looked upon her
as an