Yes, Aunt Bettie is right about Dr. John; he doesn't see a woman, and
there is no way to make him. What she had said about it made me realise
that he had always been like that, and I told myself that there was no
reason in the world why my heart should beat in my slippers on that
account. Still I don't see why Ruth Clinton should have her head
literally thrown against that stone wall, and I wish Aunt Bettie
wouldn't. It seemed like a desecration even to try to match-make him,
and it made me hot with indignation all over. I dug so fiercely at the
roots of my phlox with a trowel I had picked up that they groaned so
loud I could almost hear them. I felt as if I must operate on something.
And it was in this mood that Alfred's letter found me.

It had a surprise in it, and I sat back on the grass and read it with my
heart beating like a hammer. He was leaving Paris the day he had posted
it, and he was due to arrive in London almost as soon as it did, just
any hour now I calculated in a flash. And "from London immediately to
Hillsboro" he had written in words that fairly sung themselves off the
paper. I was frightened--so frightened that the letter shook in my
hands, and with only the thought of being sure that I might be alone for
a few minutes with it, I fled to the garret.

Surely no woman ever in all the world read such a letter as that, and no
wonder my breath almost failed me. It was a love-letter in which the
cold paper was turned into a heart that beat against mine, and I bowed
my head over it as I wetted it with tears. I knew then that I had taken
his coming back lightly; had fussed over it and been silly-proud of it;
while not _really_ caring at all. All that awful reducing my waist
measure seemed just a lack of confidence in his love for me; he wouldn't
have minded if I weighed five hundred pounds, I felt sure. He loved