she asked after a pause . `` The last Wednesday in August . They are to be married in the garden under the honeysuckle trellis ... the very spot where Mr. Irving proposed to her twenty-five years ago . Marilla , that IS romantic , even in prose . There 's to be nobody there except Mrs. Irving and Paul and Gilbert and Diana and I , and Miss Lavendar 's cousins . And they will leave on the six o'clock train for a trip to the Pacific coast . When they come back in the fall Paul and Charlotta the Fourth are to go up to Boston to live with them . But Echo Lodge is to be left just as it is ... only of course they 'll sell the hens and cow , and board up the windows ... and every summer they 're coming down to live in it . I 'm so glad . It would have hurt me dreadfully next winter at Redmond to think of that dear stone house all stripped and deserted , with empty rooms ... or far worse still , with other people living in it . But I can think of it now , just as I 've always seen it , waiting happily for the summer to bring life and laughter back to it again . '' There was more romance in the world than that which had fallen to the share of the middle-aged lovers of the stone house . Anne stumbled suddenly on it one evening when she went over to Orchard Slope by the wood cut and came out into the Barry garden . Diana Barry and Fred Wright were standing together under the big willow . Diana was leaning against the gray trunk , her lashes cast down on very crimson cheeks . One hand was held by Fred , who stood with his face bent toward her , stammering something in low earnest tones . There were no other people in the world except their two selves at that magic moment ; so neither of them saw Anne , who , after one dazed glance of comprehension , turned and sped noiselessly back through the spruce wood , never stopping till she gained her own gable room , where she sat breathlessly down by her window and tried to collect her scattered wits . `` Diana and Fred are in love with each other , '' she gasped . `` Oh , it does seem so ... so ... so HOPELESSLY grown up . '' Anne , of late , had not been without her suspicions that Diana was proving false to the melancholy Byronic hero of her early dreams .
But as `` things seen are mightier than things heard , '' or suspected , the realization that it was actually so came to her XXXXX almost the shock of perfect surprise .
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