Theodora looked over her shoulder and saw him standing still on the road . His forlorn figure haunted her thoughts all night . If Anne had not run over the next day and bolstered up her convictions , she might have spoiled everything by prematurely relenting . Ludovic , meanwhile , stood still on the road , quite oblivious to the hoots and comments of the vastly amused small boy contingent , until Theodora and his rival disappeared from his view under the firs in the hollow of her lane . Then he turned about and went home , not with his usual leisurely amble , but with a perturbed stride which proclaimed his inward disquiet . He felt bewildered . If the world had come suddenly to an end or if the lazy , meandering Grafton River had turned about and flowed up hill , Ludovic could not have been more astonished . For fifteen years he had walked home from meetings with Theodora ; and now this elderly stranger , with all the glamour of `` the States '' hanging about him , had coolly walked off with her under Ludovic 's very nose . Worse -- most unkindest cut of all -- Theodora had gone with him willingly ; nay , she had evidently enjoyed his company . Ludovic felt the stirring of a righteous anger in his easy-going soul . When he reached the end of his lane , he paused at his gate , and looked at his house , set back from the lane in a crescent of birches . Even in the moonlight , its weather-worn aspect was plainly visible . He thought of the `` palatial residence '' rumour ascribed to Arnold Sherman in Boston , and stroked his chin nervously with his sunburnt fingers . Then he doubled up his fist and struck it smartly on the gate-post . `` Theodora need n't think she is going to jilt me in this fashion , after keeping company with me for fifteen years , '' he said . `` I 'LL have something to say to it , Arnold Sherman or no Arnold Sherman . The impudence of the puppy ! '' The next morning Ludovic drove to Carmody and engaged Joshua Pye to come and paint his house , and that evening , although he was not due till Saturday night , he went down to see Theodora . Arnold Sherman was there before him , and was actually sitting in Ludovic 's own prescriptive chair . Ludovic had to deposit himself in Theodora 's new wicker rocker , where he looked and felt lamentably out of place .
If Theodora felt the situation XXXXX be awkward , she carried it off superbly .
For If although at before by from of till to