"I've kept you talking so long, I doubt she's still there."

"Oh, I told her if she stirred from that spot before you got there, I'd never let her back in my house."

"You told her you were sending me? But you don't even know me."

"I told her I was sending a young man I wanted her to be nice to for my sake because he was so lonely at this party."

"Was I that obvious?"

"No. There's always a lonely young man at my parties. It's in the nature of young men to be lonely. Did you think you were unique?"

"So you're a matchmaker."

She turned and headed for the door, slow of step but making rapid progress all the same. "I have a garden that doesn't get used enough, that's all. Think of yourself as plant food." And then she was gone, back to the party.

The young woman was in the garden, just as the hostess had promised. For a moment, seeing her from behind, he thought he knew her. He even thought, madly enough, that it was her, the one he had seen in the grocery store and then at the door of the townhouse. But then she turned and her hair was reddish and her face was really nothing like Lizzy's or even the other woman's, but she seemed nice enough. Bored, but nice.

"So you're the lonely young man?" asked the woman.

"And you're one who's supposed to cheer me up?" asked Quentin.

"She's such a matchmaker. She forgets things though. Such as, this is the third time she's sent me to wait under the cherry tree."

"I take it the previous times didn't work out?"

"One of them did. I didn't find true love, but I did find a candidate for Congress from a Philadelphia suburb."

"Is that where you're from?"

"No, it's where he was from. I'm a headhunter, Mr...."

"Fears."

"Oh, you sound dangerous. Or at least hostile."

"Yes, it sounds like 'fierce,' but it's spelled F-E-A-R-S."