This is to be my year and not Anne's." They were a week thrashing it out, and in the end it was Mrs.Tresslyn who settled the matter.

She had had her talk with Mr.Templeton Thorpe, and, after hearing all that he had to say, expressed herself in no uncertain terms on the advisability of postponing the wedding for a year if not longer.

Something she said in private to Anne appeared to have altered that charming young person's notions in regard to an early wedding, so Braden found himself without an ally.

He went to London early in the fall, with Anne's promises safely stowed away in his heart, and he came back in the middle of his year with Sir George, dazed and bewildered by her faithlessness and his grandfather's perfidy.
Out of a clear sky had come the thunderbolt.

And then, while he was still dazed and furious, his grandfather had tried to convince him that he had done him a deuce of a good turn in showing up Anne Tresslyn! In patience the old man had listened to his grandson's tirade, his ravings, his anathemas.