Leola called every morning on Rex, and remained until the midday meal at Wheatlands. After appearing at this hour she slipped away again, returning to the cottage and staying till she had to go home to supper. Her regularity at these meals warded off any suspicion that she spent the intervening hours in the company of a very charming young man, who would render all Wizard Hermann’s schemes to marry her off to her unknown suitor quite null and void.
After supper, then, came the lonely time, for Leola had to remain at home and play to the governess on the piano in the dingy parlor, whose faded hangings had not been renovated for years. As this had been a yearly practice, she could not omit it without exciting wonder on the part of the spinster lady who had acted as her governess and companion since early childhood, and, now that school days were over, looked after the housekeeping, staying on indefinitely, not seeming to have either friends or suitors.
Yet, although she was over forty now, Miss Tuttle had not given over a scarcely-concealed hope of marrying.
As she was very thin and tall, her secret choice had fallen on her exact opposite, a neighboring widower about fifty, who was rather short and very stout, and had recently come into a fortune by selling some valuable coal-lands in Greenbrier county.
Miss Tuttle having been in love with neighbor Bennett when he was in moderate circumstances, only loved him the harder when he became so rich that he did not know how to spend his money.
Some neighborly kindnesses he had certainly shown her, but not as many as she wished, and no amount of scheming had sufficed to bring him to the point of proposing.
Thus absorbed in her own love-affair, it was no wonder that Miss Tuttle paid small attention to Leola’s comings and goings, regarding her still as a pretty child who had heretofore laughed at love and lovers.
So there were none to molest the lovers and make them afraid, for Wizard Hermann, though he did not give over his scheme, held his peace and went his way in cunning silence, giving Leola time to get over her fright.
Even Doctor Barnes, who had not found it necessary to pay but three visits to his patient, did not know of the romance going on at the cottage, and being very busy with the measles, just then epidemic in Alderson and the country round about, he had no time to gossip about the stranger whose life Leola Mead had saved. As there were none who knew Ray Chester, so there were none to worry over him; and beneath the matronly chaperonage of kind Widow Gray their secret love bloomed into a splendid flower whose strong roots only death could tear away.
“I love you, sweet: how can you ever learn