He 's oh ! so handsome , and just as you described him , except that his hair is quite gray . He has never married -- I asked Mrs. Maxwell -- so you see he has never forgotten you , Miss Holmes . And , oh , I believe everything is going to come out all right . '' I could n't exactly share her cheerful belief . Everything seemed to me to be coming out most horribly wrong . I was so mixed up I did n't know what to do or say . I felt as if I were in a bad dream -- it MUST be a dream -- there could n't really be a Cecil Fenwick ! My feelings were simply indescribable . Fortunately every one put my agitation down to quite a different cause , and they very kindly left me alone to recover myself . I shall never forget that awful afternoon . Right after tea I excused myself and went home as fast as I could go . There I shut myself up in my room , but NOT to write poetry in my blank book . No , indeed ! I felt in no poetical mood . I tried to look the facts squarely in the face . There was a Cecil Fenwick , extraordinary as the coincidence was , and he was here in Avonlea . All my friends -- and foes -- believed that he was the estranged lover of my youth . If he stayed long in Avonlea , one of two things was bound to happen . He would hear the story I had told about him and deny it , and I would be held up to shame and derision for the rest of my natural life ; or else he would simply go away in ignorance , and everybody would suppose he had forgotten me and would pity me maddeningly .
The latter possibility was bad enough , but it was n't XXXXX be compared to the former ; and oh , how I prayed -- yes , I DID pray about it -- that he would go right away .
If about after except in of out that to up