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“Cecily, I want to marry him. I–I–love him. I always have. I never thought of this when I promised. Oh, Cecily, you’ll let me off my promise, won’t you?”

“No,” said Cecily. It was all she said. Lucy Ellen’s hands fell to her sides, and the light went out of her face.

“You won’t?” she said hopelessly.

Cecily went out. At the door she turned.

“When John Edwards asked me to marry him six years ago, I said no for your sake. To my mind a promise is a promise. But you were always weak and romantic, Lucy Ellen.”

Lucy Ellen made no response. She stood limply on the hearth-rug like a faded blossom bitten by frost.

After Cromwell Biron had gone away the next evening, with all his brisk jauntiness shorn from him for the time, Lucy Ellen went up to Cecily’s room. She stood for a moment in the narrow doorway, with the lamplight striking upward with a gruesome effect on her wan face.

“I’ve sent him away,” she said lifelessly. “I’ve kept my promise, Cecily.”

There was silence for a moment. Cecily did not know what to say. Suddenly Lucy Ellen burst out bitterly.

“I wish I was dead!”

Then she turned swiftly and ran across the hall to her own room. Cecily gave a little moan of pain. This was her reward for all the love she had lavished on Lucy Ellen.

“Anyway, it is all over,” she said, looking dourly into the moonlit boughs of the firs; “Lucy Ellen’ll get over it. When Cromwell is gone she’ll forget all about him. I’m not going to fret. She promised, and she wanted the promise first.”

During the next fortnight tragedy held grim sway in the little weather-gray house among the firs–a tragedy tempered with grim comedy for Cecily, who, amid all her agony, could not help being amused at Lucy Ellen’s romantic way of sorrowing.

Lucy Ellen did her mornings’ work listlessly and drooped through the afternoons. Cecily would have felt it as a relief if Lucy Ellen had upbraided her, but after her outburst on the night she sent Cromwell away, Lucy Ellen never uttered a word of reproach or complaint.

One evening Cecily made a neighborly call in the village. Cromwell Biron happened to be there and gallantly insisted upon seeing her home.

She understood from Cromwell’s unaltered manner that Lucy Ellen had not told him why she had refused him. She felt a sudden admiration for her cousin.

When they reached the house Cromwell halted suddenly in the banner of light that streamed from the sitting-room window. They saw Lucy Ellen sitting alone before the fire, her arms folded on the table, and her head bowed on them. Her white cat sat unnoticed at the table beside her. Cecily gave a gasp of surrender.

“You’d better come in,” she said, harshly. “Lucy Ellen looks lonesome.”

Cromwell muttered sheepishly, “I’m afraid I wouldn’t be company for her. Lucy Ellen doesn’t like me much–“

“Oh, doesn’t she!” said Cecily, bitterly. “She likes you better than she likes me for all I’ve–but it’s no matter. It’s been all my fault–she’ll explain. Tell her I said she could. Come in, I say.”

She caught the still reluctant Cromwell by the arm and fairly dragged him over the geranium beds and through the front door. She opened the sitting-room door and pushed him in. Lucy Ellen rose in amazement. Over Cromwell’s bald head loomed Cecily’s dark face, tragic and determined.

“Here’s your beau, Lucy Ellen,” she said, “and I give you back your promise.”

She shut the door upon the sudden illumination of Lucy Ellen’s face and went up-stairs with the tears rolling down her cheeks.

“It’s my turn to wish I was dead,” she muttered. Then she laughed hysterically.

“That goose of a Cromwell! How queer he did look standing there, frightened to death of Lucy Ellen. Poor little Lucy Ellen! Well, I hope he’ll be good to her.”