The Spencer young ones are crazy over her already . She 's got twenty pupils around here and in Grafton and Avonlea . '' When the Old Lady had found out everything Crooked Jack could tell her , she went into the house and sat down by the window of her little sitting-room to think it all over . She was tingling from head to foot with excitement . Leslie 's daughter ! This Old Lady had had her romance once . Long ago -- forty years ago -- she had been engaged to Leslie Gray , a young college student who taught in Spencervale for the summer term one year -- the golden summer of Margaret Lloyd 's life . Leslie had been a shy , dreamy , handsome fellow with literary ambitions , which , as he and Margaret both firmly believed , would one day bring him fame and fortune . Then there had been a foolish , bitter quarrel at the end of that golden summer . Leslie had gone away in anger , afterwards he had written , but Margaret Lloyd , still in the grasp of her pride and resentment , had sent a harsh answer . No more letters came ; Leslie Gray never returned ; and one day Margaret wakened to the realization that she had put love out of her life for ever . She knew it would never be hers again ; and from that moment her feet were turned from youth to walk down the valley of shadow to a lonely , eccentric age . Many years later she heard of Leslie 's marriage ; then came news of his death , after a life that had not fulfilled his dreams for him . Nothing more she had heard or known -- nothing to this day , when she had seen his daughter pass her by unseeing in the beech hollow . `` His daughter ! And she might have been MY daughter , '' murmured the Old Lady . `` Oh , if I could only know her and love her -- and perhaps win her love in return ! But I can not . I could not have Leslie Gray 's daughter know how poor I am -- how low I have been brought . I could not bear that .
And to think she is living so near me , the darling -- just up the lane and XXXXX the hill .
as at from if in into of out over with