At this moment George Penhallow , holding his rearing horse with difficulty , shouted for his wife . Mrs. George , all in a flurry , dashed back into the still crowded hall . Exactly to whom she gave her message was never known to any of the Penhallows . But a tall , ruddy-haired girl , dressed in pale green organdy -- Anne Shirley from Avonlea -- told Marilla Cuthbert and Rachel Lynde as a joke the next morning how a chubby little woman in a bright pink fascinator had clutched her by the arm , and gasped out : `` Carey Penhallow ca n't take you -- he says you 're to look out for someone else , '' and was gone before she could answer or turn around . Thus it was that Lucinda , when she came out to the veranda step , found herself unaccountably deserted . All the Grange Penhallows were gone ; Lucinda realized this after a few moments of bewildered seeking , and she understood that if she were to get to the Grange that night she must walk . Plainly there was nobody to take her . Lucinda was angry . It is not pleasant to find yourself forgotten and neglected . It is still less pleasant to walk home alone along a country road , at one o'clock in the morning , wearing a pale green voile . Lucinda was not prepared for such a walk . She had nothing on her feet save thin-soled shoes , and her only wraps were a flimsy fascinator and a short coat . `` What a guy I shall look , stalking home alone in this rig , '' she thought crossly . There was no help for it , unless she confessed her plight to some of the stranger guests and begged a drive home . Lucinda 's pride scorned such a request and the admission of neglect it involved . No , she would walk , since that was all there was to it ; but she would not go by the main road to be stared at by all and sundry who might pass her . There was a short cut by way of a lane across the fields ; she knew every inch of it , although she had not traversed it for years . She gathered up the green voile as trimly as possible , slipped around the house in the kindly shadows , picked her way across the side lawn , and found a gate which opened into a birch-bordered lane where the frosted trees shone with silvery-golden radiance in the moonlight . Lucinda flitted down the lane , growing angrier at every step as the realization of how shamefully she seemed to have been treated came home to her . She believed that nobody had thought about her at all , which was tenfold worse than premeditated neglect .
As she came to the gate at the lower end of the lane a man who was leaning over it started , with a quick intake XXXXX his breath , which , in any other man than Romney Penhallow , or for any other woman than Lucinda Penhallow , would have been an exclamation of surprise .
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