Ann spent a troubled night after her talk with Ben, and she had reached no decision the next day when she went down to the woods to get her book. She did not know whether or not she would wait to see Edward. She ought not to see him. It had not occurred to her that as things were between Garvin and herself, she ought not to see Edward in this way—not until after she had suspected that Edward cared a great deal for her.

Ann did not know how much she wanted to see Edward until she discovered that there was no book left for her. She searched the bushes thoroughly; there was nothing there. Then she paused to think.... She had avoided Edward and he had decided that she did not want to see him; she had lost her friend.

Ann went slowly back to the road and stood hesitating. She did not want to go back to the house; she felt more like going up to the pines, to sit with her trouble where no one would see her.

She had flushed while she searched and found nothing, then grown pale when she felt that she had been forsaken. She brightened into beauty when she heard a horse on the Back Road. He was late in coming, that was all. She waited, her eyes fixed on the turning in the road.

It was Baird who appeared, and, riding with him, Judith Westmore. They were riding so close to each other that their horses almost touched, Judith with head bent and playing with her whip, Baird looking down at her.

Ann would have escaped if she could, but they were upon her before she had recovered from surprise, and Baird had seen her. He straightened instantly, and Ann also stiffened, moving only to give them room to pass. Baird looked at her steadily, for a questioning instant, then suddenly smiled and lifted his cap. He bowed profoundly enough when Ann smiled, though she had merely glanced at him; she was looking at Judith.

Ann's smile and bow should have been claimed by Judith, it was meant for her; but she looked at Ann, at her and through her, a blankly brilliant stare, then touched her horse. Both horses leaped at her flick of the whip, and left Ann standing beside the road.

Ann did not go to the pines and weep; it might have been better for her if she had. She went back to the house, and with head high. Hers had always been an inflammable temper, but never before had she felt the profound anger that held her now. It turned her cold, not hot. With all the family enmity forgotten, she had smiled as she would have smiled at Edward, and had been cut in a manner possible only to as finished a product as Judith. Ann's nerves were always high strung, and for the last weeks she had been under the strain of persistent denial, anxious over the danger to Garvin of their secret meetings, and too inexperienced to realize the still greater danger to herself from the sort of appeal Garvin was making to her; certain only that neither he nor she was happy. Edward's defection had been followed too closely by Judith's act. Ann shivered like one with ague.

She was very quiet at supper. The meal was a hurried one, for Sue and Coats were going to the village, and no one noticed Ann's white face. She was going to meet Garvin that night. She went as soon as it was dark, and waited for him, sitting tensely upright under the willows; usually it was Garvin who waited. She sat so still that a rabbit came in under the willows, almost to her feet, before it leaped and fled.

Garvin came presently, well hidden by the dense growth of elderberry bushes that, matted by foxgrape vines, extended to the creek. He had chosen this spot because he could come all the way from the woods under cover. "Ann!" he said. "You here first!" On the instant his arms were about her.

Ann did not hold him off as usual. She sat quite still and let him kiss her. It was a few moments before he noticed how passive she was. "What is it? What has happened?" he asked.

"Just that I have made up my mind."

"To what?" he asked, not knowing what to expect, for he was accustomed to reluctance and withdrawal.

"That I'll go with you, Garvin—as soon as you can take me away. Then I'll marry you. I'm a Penniman, but I'm fully as good as your sister—or any Westmore lady ever was. I'm not afraid to marry you."

The blood flared in Garvin's face, but he thanked her as tenderly as any Westmore ever uttered the words. "My darling!... You do love me, then! You do love me! Thank you, dear."

Ann's hand drew his face to hers. "You're all I have," she said.

Garvin held her closely while he drew off his seal ring, engraved with the Westmore crest, and put it on her finger. "You can't wear it openly, dear; but every time you look at it it will remind you that you are promised to me."

He kissed her hands and her lips, while he gave her every assurance desire for possession ever invented. And Ann, borne into more perfect trust, gave her future more fully into his keeping.