West Lawn, and The rector of St. Mark's

“Engaged to Lucy Harcourt! I never could have believed it. He’s right in saying that she is far more suitable for me than him,” Thornton exclaimed, dashing aside the letter and feeling conscious of a pang as he remembered the bright airy little beauty in whom he had once been strongly interested, even if he did call her frivolous and ridicule her childish ways.

She was frivolous, too much so by far to be a clergyman’s wife, and for a full half hour Thornton paced up and down the room, meditating on Arthur’s choice and wondering how upon earth it ever happened.

Lucy had insisted that she did not care to go to Saratoga. She preferred remaining in Hanover, where it was cool and quiet, and where she would not have to dress three times a day and dance every night until twelve. She was beginning to find that there was something to live for besides consulting one’s own pleasure, and she meant to do good the rest of her life, she said, assuming such a sober, nun-like air, that no one who saw her could fail to laugh, it was so at variance with her entire nature. But Lucy was in earnest. Hanover had a greater attraction for her than all the watering-places in the world, and she was very grateful when Fanny threw her influence on her side and so turned the scale in her favor.

Fanny was glad to leave her dangerous cousin at home, especially after Mr. Bellamy decided to join their party at Saratoga; and as she carried great weight with both her parents it was finally decided to let Lucy remain at Prospect Hill in peace, and one morning in July she saw the family depart without a single feeling of regret that she was not of their number. She had far too much on her hands to spend her time in regretting anything: there was the parish school to visit, and a class of children to hear, children who were no longer ragged, for Lucy’s money had been expended till even Arthur had remonstrated with her, and read her a long lecture on the subject of misapplied charity. Then there was Widow Hobbs waiting for the jelly which Lucy had promised, and for the chapter which Lucy now read to her, sitting where she could watch the road and see just who turned the corner, her voice always sounding a little more serious and good when the footsteps belonged to Arthur Leighton, and her eyes always glancing at the bit of a cracked mirror on the wall, to see that her dress and hair and ribbons were right before Arthur came in. It was a very pretty sight to see her thus and hear her as she read to the poor, whose surroundings she had so greatly improved; and Arthur always smiled gratefully upon her, and then walked back with her to Prospect Hill, where he lingered while she played or talked to him, or brought the luscious fruits with which the garden abounded.

This was Lucy’s life, which she preferred to Saratoga, and they left her to enjoy it, somewhat to Arthur’s discomfiture, for, much as he valued her society, he would rather she had gone where the Hethertons did, for he could not be insensible to the remarks which were being made by the curious villagers, who watched this new flirtation, as they called it, and wondered if their minister had forgotten Anna Ruthven. He had not forgotten her, and many a time was her loved name upon his lips and a thought of her in his heart, while he never returned from an interview with Lucy that he did not contrast the two, and sigh for the olden time when Anna was his coworker instead of pretty Lucy Harcourt. And yet there was about the latter a powerful fascination which he found it hard to resist. It rested him just to look at her, she was so fresh, so bright, and so beautiful; and then she flattered his self-love by the unbounded deference she paid to his opinions, studying all his tastes and bringing her will into perfect subjection to his, until she could scarcely be said to have a thought or feeling which was not a reflection of his own. And so the flirtation, which at first had been a one-sided affair, began to assume a more serious form, and the rector went oftener to Prospect Hill, while the Hetherton carriage stood daily at the gate of the parsonage, and people talked and gossiped, until Captain Humphreys, Anna’s grandfather, concluded it was his duty as senior warden of St. Mark’s, to talk with the young rector and know “what his intentions were.”

“You have none?” he said, fixing his mild eyes reproachfully upon his clergyman, who recoiled a little beneath the gaze. “Then, if you have no intentions, my advice to you is that you quit it and let the gal alone, or you’ll ruin her, if she ain’t spoilt already, as some of the women folks say she is. It don’t do no gal any good to have a chap, and ’specially a minister, gallivantin’ after her, as I must say you’ve been after this one for the last few weeks. She’s a pretty little creeter, and I don’t blame you for liking her. It makes my old blood stir faster when she comes purring around me, with her soft ways and winsome face, and so I don’t wonder at you, but when you say you’ve no intentions, I blame you greatly. You or’to have. Excuse my plainness; I’m an old man, and I like my minister, and don’t want him to go wrong; and then I feel for her, left all alone by all her folks; more’s the shame to them, and more’s the harm to you, to tangle up her affections as you are doing if you are not in earnest; and so I speak for her just as I should want some one to speak for Anna!”

The old man’s voice trembled a little here, for it had been a wish of his that Anna should occupy the parsonage, and he had at first felt a little resentment against the gay young creature who seemed to have supplanted her, but he was over that now, and in all honesty of heart he spoke both for Lucy’s interest and that of his clergyman. And Arthur listened to him respectfully, feeling when he was gone that he merited the rebuke,—that he had not been guiltless in the matter,—that if he did not mean to marry Lucy Harcourt he should let her alone. And he would, he said,—he would not go to Prospect Hill again for two whole weeks, nor visit at the cottages where he was sure to find her; he would keep himself at home; and he did, and shut himself up among his books, not even going to make a pastoral call on Lucy when he heard that she was sick. And so Lucy came to him, looking dangerously charming in her blue riding-habit with the white feather streaming from her hat. Very prettily she pouted, too, as she chided him for his neglect, and asked why he had not been to see her nor anybody;—there was the Widow Hobbs, and Mrs. Briggs, and those miserable Donelsons, whom he had not been near for a fortnight.

“What is the reason?” she asked, beating her foot upon the carpet and tapping the end of her riding-whip upon the sermon he was writing. “Are you displeased with me, Arthur,” she continued, her eyes filling with tears as she saw the expression of his face. “Have I done anything wrong; I am so sorry if I have.”

Her voice had in it the grieved tones of a little child, and her eyes were very bright with the tears quivering on her long eyelashes. Leaning back in his chair, with his hands clasped behind his head, a position he usually assumed when puzzled and perplexed, the rector looked at her a moment before he spoke. He could not define to himself the nature of the interest he took in Lucy Harcourt. He admired her greatly, and the self-denials and generous exertions she had made to be of use to him since Anna went away, had touched a tender chord and made her seem very near to him. Habit with him was everything, and the past two weeks’ isolation had shown him how necessary she had become to him. She did not satisfy his higher wants as Anna Ruthven had done. No one could ever do that, but she amused and soothed and rested him, and made his duties lighter by taking half of them upon herself. That she was more attached to him than he could wish he greatly feared, for since Captain Humphreys’ visit he had seen matters differently from what he saw them before, and had unsparingly questioned himself as to how far he would be answerable for her future weal or woe.

“Guilty, verily I am guilty in leading her on if I meant nothing by it,” he had written against himself, pausing in his sermon to write it just as Lucy came in, appealing to him to know why he had neglected her so long.

She was very beautiful this morning, and Arthur felt his heart beat rapidly as he looked at her, and thought any man who had not known Anna Ruthven would be glad to gather that bright creature in his arms and know she was his own. One long, long sigh to the memory of all he had hoped for once,—one bitter pang as he remembered Anna and that twilight hour in the church, and then he made a mad plunge in the dark and said:

“Lucy, do you know people are beginning to talk about my seeing you so much?”

“Well, let them talk; who cares?” Lucy replied, with a good deal of asperity of manner for her, for that very morning the housekeeper at Prospect Hill had ventured to remonstrate with her for “running after the parson.” “Pray where is the wrong? What harm can come of it?”

“None, perhaps,” Arthur replied, “if one could keep their affections under control. But if either of us should learn to love the other very much and the love was not reciprocated, harm would surely come of that. At least that was the view Captain Humphreys took of the matter when he was speaking to me about it.”

There were red spots on Lucy’s face, but her lips were very white and the buttons on her riding-dress rose and fell rapidly with the beating of her heart as she looked steadily at Arthur. Was he going to send her from him,—back to the insipid life she had lived before she knew him? It was too terrible to believe, and the great tears rolled slowly down her cheeks. Then as a flash of pride came to her aid, she dashed them away and said to him haughtily:

“And so for fear I shall fall in love with you, you are sacrificing both comfort and freedom, and shutting yourself up with your books and studies to the neglect of other duties. But it need be so no longer. The necessity for it, if it existed once, certainly does not now. I will not be in your way; forgive me that I ever have been.”

Lucy’s voice began to tremble as she gathered up her riding-habit and turned to find her gauntlets. One of them had dropped upon the floor between the table and the rector, and as she stooped to reach it her curls almost swept the young man’s lap.

“Let me get it for you,” he said, hastily pushing back his chair and awkwardly entangling his foot in her long sweeping dress, so that when she arose she stumbled backward and would have fallen, but for the arm he quickly passed around her.

Something in the touch of that quivering form completed the work of temptation, and he held it for an instant, when she said to him pettishly:

“Please let me go, sir.”

“No, Lucy, I can’t let you go. I want you to stay with me.”

Instantly the drooping head was uplifted, and Lucy’s eyes looked into his with such a wistful, pleading, wondering look that Arthur saw or thought he saw his duty plain, and gently touching his lips to the brow glistening so white within their reach, he continued:

“There is a way to stop the gossip and make it right for me to see you. Promise to be my wife, and not even Captain Humphreys can say aught against it.”

Arthur’s voice trembled now, for the mention of Captain Humphreys had brought a thought of Anna, whose eyes seemed for an instant to look reproachfully upon that wooing. But he had gone too far to retract; he had only to wait for Lucy’s answer. There was no deception about her; hers was a nature as clear as crystal, and with a gush of glad tears she promised to be the rector’s wife; and hiding her face on his bosom, told him, brokenly, how unworthy she was of him; how foolish, and how unsuited to the place, but promising to do the best she could not to bring him into disgrace on account of her shortcomings.

“With the knowledge that you love me I can do anything,” she said, and her white hand crept slowly into the cold, clammy one which lay so listlessly on Arthur’s lap.

He was already repenting, for he felt that it was sin to take that warm, trusting, loving heart in exchange for the cold, half lifeless one he should render in return, and in which scarcely a pulse of joy was beating, even though he held his promised wife; and she was fair and beautiful as ever promised wife could be.

“But I can make her happy, and I will,” he thought, pressing the warm fingers which quivered to his touch.

But he did not kiss her again; he could not for the eyes, which still seemed looking at him and asking what he did. There was a strange spell about those phantom eyes, and they made him say to Lucy, who was now sitting demurely at his side:

“I could not clear my conscience if I did not confess that you are not the first woman whom I have asked to be my wife.”

There was a start, and Lucy’s face was pale as ashes, while her hand went quickly to her side, where the heartbeats were visible, warning Arthur to be careful how he startled one whose life hung on so slender a thread as Lucy’s; so, when she asked, “Who was it, and why did you not marry her? Did you love her very much?” he answered indifferently, “I would rather not tell you who it was, as that might be a breach of confidence. She did not care to be my wife, and so that dream was over and I was left for you.”

He did not say how much he loved her who had discarded him, but Lucy forgot the omission, and asked, “Was she very young and pretty?”

“Young and pretty both, but not as beautiful as you,” Arthur replied, his fingers softly putting back the golden curls from the face looking so trustingly into his.

And in that he answered truly. He had seen no face as beautiful of its kind as Lucy’s was, and he was glad that he could tell her so. He knew how that would please her and partly make amends for the tender words which he could not speak,—for the phantom eyes still haunting him so strangely.

And Lucy, who took all things for granted, was more than content, although she wondered that he did not kiss her again, and wished she knew the girl who had come so near being in her place. But she respected his wishes too much to ask after what he had said, and she tried to make herself glad that he had been so frank with her and not left his other love-affair to the chance of her discovering it afterwards, at a time when it might be painful to her.

“I wish I had something to confess,” she thought; but from the score of her flirtations, and even offers, for she had not lacked for them, she could not find one where her own feelings had been enlisted in ever so slight a degree until she remembered Thornton Hastings, who for one whole week had paid her such attentions as had made her dream of him, and even drive round once on purpose to look at the house on Madison Square where the future Mrs. Hastings was to live.

But his coolness afterwards, and his comments on her frivolity had terribly angered her, making her think that she hated him, as she had said to Anna. Now, however, as she remembered the drive and the house, she nestled closer to Arthur and told him all about it, fingering the buttons on his dressing-gown as she told him it, and never dreaming of the pang she was inflicting as Arthur thought how mysterious were God’s ways, and wondered that He had not reversed the matter and given Lucy to Thornton Hastings, rather than to him, who did not half deserve her.

“I know now I never cared a bit for Thornton Hastings, though I might if he had not been so mean as to call me frivolous,” Lucy said, as she arose to go; then suddenly turning to the rector, she added: “I shall never ask who your first love was, but would like to know if you have quite forgotten her?”

“Have you forgotten Thornton Hastings?” Arthur asked, laughingly; and Lucy replied, “Of course not; one never forgets, but I don’t care a pin about him now, and did I tell you, Fanny writes that rumor says he will marry Anna Ruthven?”

“Yes,—no,—I did not know; I am not surprised;” and Arthur stooped to pick up a book lying on the floor, thus hiding his face from Lucy, who, woman-like, was glad to report a piece of gossip, and continued:

“She is a great belle, Fanny says; dresses beautifully and in perfect taste, besides talking as if she knew something, and this pleases Mr. Hastings, who takes her out to ride and drive, and all this after I warned her against him and told her just what he said of me. I am surprised at her!”

Lucy was drawing on her gauntlets, and Arthur was waiting to see her out, but she still lingered on the threshold, and at last said to him:

“I wonder you never fell in love with Anna yourself. I am sure, if I were you I should prefer her to me. She knows something and I do not, but I am going to study; there are piles of books in the library at Prospect Hill, and you shall see what a famous student I will become. If I get puzzled will you help me?”

“Yes, willingly,” Arthur replied, wishing that she would go, before she indulged in any more speculation as to why he did not love Anna Ruthven.

But Lucy was not done yet; the keenest pang was yet to come, and Arthur felt as if the earth was giving way beneath his feet, when, as he lifted her into the saddle and took her hand at parting, she said:

“You remember I am not going to be jealous of that other girl. There is only one person who could make me so, and that is Anna Ruthven; but I know it was not she, for that night we all came from Mrs. Hobbs’s and she went with me upstairs, I asked her honestly if you had ever offered yourself to her, and she told me you had not. I think you showed a lack of taste; but I am glad it was not Anna.”

Lucy was far down the road ere Arthur recovered from the shock her last words had given him. What did it mean, and why had Anna said he never proposed? Was there some mistake, and he the victim of it? There was a blinding mist before the young man’s eyes, and a gnawing pain at his heart as he returned to his study and went over again with all the incidents of Anna’s refusal, even to the reading of the letter which, he already knew by heart. Then, as the thought came over him that possibly Mrs. Meredith played him false in some way, he groaned aloud, and the great sweat-drops fell upon the table where he leaned his head. But this could not be, he reasoned. Lucy was mistaken. She had not heard aright. Somebody surely was mistaken, or he had committed a fatal error.

“But I must abide by it,” he said, lifting up his pallid face. “God forgive the wrong I have done in asking Lucy to be my wife when my heart belonged to another. God help me to forget the one and love the other as I ought. She is a lovely little girl, trusting me so wholly that I can make her happy,—and I will!—but Anna,—O Anna!”

It was a despairing cry, such as a newly-engaged man should never have sent after another than his affianced bride; and Arthur thought so too, fighting back his first love with an iron will, and after that hour of anguish burying it so far from sight that he went that night to Captain Humphreys and told of his engagement; then called upon his bride-elect, and tried so hard to be satisfied, that, when at a late hour he returned to the parsonage, he was more than content; and by way of fortifying himself still more, wrote the letter which Thornton Hastings read at Newport.

And that was how it happened.

Through the rich curtains which shaded the windows of a room looking out on Fifth Avenue the late October sun was shining; and as its red light played among the flowers on the carpet, a pale young girl sat watching it and thinking of the Hanover hills, now decked in their autumnal glory, and of the ivy on St. Mark’s, growing so bright and beautiful beneath the autumnal frosts. Anna had been very sick since that morning in September when she sat on the piazza at the Ocean House and read Lucy Harcourt’s letter. The faint was a precursor of fever, the physician said when summoned to her aid; and in a tremor of fear and distress Mrs. Meredith had had her removed at once to New York, and that was the last Anna remembered. From the moment her aching head had touched the soft pillows in Aunt Meredith’s home, all consciousness had fled, and for weeks she had hovered so near to death that the telegraph-wires bore daily messages to Hanover, where the aged couple who had cared for her since her childhood wept, and prayed, and watched for tidings from their darling. They could not go to her, for Grandpa Humphreys had broken his leg, and his wife could not leave him; so they waited with what patience they could for the daily bulletins which Mrs. Meredith sent, appreciating their anxiety, and feeling glad withal of anything which kept them from New York.

“She had best be prayed for in church,” the old man said; and so, Sunday after Sunday, Arthur read the prayer for the sick, his voice trembling as it had never trembled before, and a keener sorrow in his heart than he had ever known when saying the solemn words.

Heretofore the persons prayed for had been comparative strangers,—people in whom he felt only the interest a pastor feels in all his flock; but now it was Anna, whose case he took to God, and he always smothered a sob during the moment he waited for the fervent response the congregation made, the Amen which came from the pew where Lucy sat being louder and heartier than all the rest, and having in it a sound of the tears which dropped so fast on Lucy’s book, as she asked that her dear friend might not die. Oh, how he longed to go to her! But this he could not do, and so he had sent Lucy, who bent so tenderly above the sick girl, whispering loving words in her ear, and dropping kisses upon the lips which uttered no response, save once, when Lucy said, “Do you remember Arthur?”

Then they murmured faintly: “Yes,—Arthur,—I remember him, and the Christmas song, and the gathering in the church. But that was long ago; there’s much happened since then.”

“And I am to marry Arthur,” Lucy had said again; but this time there was no sign that she was understood, and that afternoon she went back to Hanover loaded with tickets for the children of St. Mark’s and new books for the Sunday-school, and accompanied by Valencia, who, having had a serious difference with her mistress, Mrs. Meredith, had offered her services to Miss Harcourt, and been at once accepted.

That was near the middle of October; now it was the last, and Anna was so much better that she sat up for an hour or more and listened with some degree of interest to what Mrs. Meredith told her of the days when she lay so unconscious of all that was passing around her, never heeding the kindly voice of Thornton Hastings, who more than once had stood by her pillow with his hand on her feverish brow, and tokens of whose thoughtfulness were visible in the choice bouquets he sent each day, with notes of anxious inquiry when he did not come himself. Anna had not seen him yet since her convalescence. She would rather not see any one until strong enough to talk, she said. And so Thornton waited patiently for the interview she had promised him when she should be stronger, but every day he sent her fruit, and flowers, and books which he thought would interest her, and which always made her cheeks grow hot and her heart beat regretfully, for she knew of the answer she must give him when he came, and she shrank from wounding him.

“He is too good, too noble, to have an unwilling wife,” she thought; but that did not make it the less hard to tell him so, and when at last she was well enough to see him, she waited his coming nervously, starting when she heard his step, and trembling like a leaf as he drew near her chair.

It was a very thin, wasted hand which he took in his, holding it for a moment between his own, and then laying it gently back upon her lap. He had come for the answer to a question put six weeks before, and Anna gave it to him,—kindly, considerately, but decidedly. She could not be his wife, she said, because she did not love him as he ought to be loved.

“It is nothing personal,” she added, working nervously at the heavy fringe of her shawl. “I respect you more than any man I ever knew,—except one; and had I met you years ago,—before—before—”

“I understand you,” Thornton said, coming to her aid. “You have tried to love me, but you cannot, because your affections are given to another.”

Anna bowed her head in silence; then, after a moment, she continued:

“You must forgive me, Mr. Hastings, for not telling you this at once. I did not know then but I could love you; at least, I meant to try, for you see this other one,”—the fingers got terribly tangled in the fringe as Anna gasped for breath and went on,—“he does not know, and never will,—that is,—he never cared for me, nor guessed how foolish I was to give him my love unsought.”

“Then it is not Arthur Leighton, and that is why you refused him too,” Mr. Hastings said involuntarily; and Anna looked quickly up, her cheeks growing paler than they were before, as she replied: “I don’t know what you mean. I never refused Mr. Leighton,—never!”

“You never refused Mr. Leighton?” Thornton exclaimed, forgetting all discretion in his surprise at this flat contradiction. “I have Arthur’s word for it, written to me last June, while Mrs. Meredith was there, I think.”

“He surely could not have meant it, because it never occurred; there is some mistake,” Anna found strength to say; and then she lay back in her easy-chair panting for breath, her brain all in a whirl as she thought of the possibility that she was once so near the greatest happiness she had ever desired, and which was lost to her now.

He brought her smelling-salts; he gave her ice-water to drink, and then, kneeling beside her, he fanned her gently, while he continued: “There surely is a mistake, and, I fear, a great wrong, too, somewhere. Were all your servants trusty? Was there no one who would withhold a letter if he had written? Were you always at home when he called?”

Thornton questioned her rapidly, for there was a suspicion in his mind as to the real culprit, but he would not hint it to Anna unless she suggested it herself. And this she was not likely to do. Mrs. Meredith had been too kind to her during the past summer, and especially during her recent illness, to allow of such a thought concerning her; and in a maze of perplexity she replied to his inquiries: “We keep but one servant,—Esther,—and she I know is trusty. Besides, who could have refused him for me? Grandfather would not, I know, because—because—” she hesitated a little, and her cheeks blushed scarlet as she added, “I sometimes thought he wanted it to be.”

If Thornton had previously had a doubt as to the other man who stood between himself and Anna, that doubt was now removed, and laying aside all thoughts of self, he exclaimed:

“I tell you there is a great wrong somewhere. Arthur never told an untruth; he thought that you refused him; he thinks so still, and I shall never rest till I have solved the mystery. I will write to him to-day.”

For an instant there swept over Anna a feeling of unutterable joy as she thought what the end might be; then, as she remembered Lucy, her heart seemed to stop its beating, and with a moan she stretched her hands towards Thornton, who had risen as if to leave her.

“No, no, you must not interfere,” she said. “It is too late, too late. Don’t you remember Lucy? don’t you know she is to be his wife? Lucy must not be sacrificed for me. I can bear it the best.”

She knew she had betrayed her secret, and she tried to take it back, but Thornton interrupted her with, “Never mind now, Anna. I guessed it all before, and it hurts my self-pride less to know that it is Arthur whom you prefer to me. I do not blame you for it.”

He smoothed her hair pityingly, while he stood over her a moment, wondering what his duty was. Anna told him plainly what it was. He must leave Arthur and Lucy alone. She insisted upon having it so, and he promised her at last that he would not interfere. Then taking her hand, he pressed it a moment between his own and went out from her presence. In the hall below he met with Mrs. Meredith, who he knew was waiting anxiously to hear the result of that long interview.

“Your niece will never be my wife, and I am satisfied to have it so,” he said; then, as he saw the lowering of her brow, he continued, “I have long suspected that she loved another, and my suspicions are confirmed, though there’s something I cannot understand,” and fixing his eyes searchingly upon Mrs. Meredith, he told what Arthur had written and of Anna’s denial of the same. “Somebody played her false,” he said, rather enjoying the look of terror and shame which crept into the haughty woman’s eyes, as she tried to appear natural and express her own surprise at what she heard.

“I was right in my conjecture,” Thornton thought as he took his leave of Mrs. Meredith, who could not face Anna then, but paced restlessly up and down her spacious rooms, wondering how much Thornton suspected, and what the end would be.

She had sinned for naught; Anna had upset all her cherished plans, and could she have gone back for a few months and done her work again, she would have left the letter lying where she found it. But that could not be now. She must reap as she had sown, and resolving finally to hope for the best and abide the result, she went up to Anna, who, having no suspicion of her, hurt her ten times more cruelly, by the perfect faith with which she confided the story to her, than bitter reproaches would have done.

“I know you wanted me to marry Mr. Hastings,” Anna said, “and I would if I could have done so conscientiously, but I could not, for I may confess it now to you. I did love Arthur so much, and I hoped that he loved me.”

The cold, hard woman, who had brought this grief upon her niece, could only answer that it did not matter. She was not very sorry, although she had wanted her to marry Mr. Hastings, but she must not fret about that now, or about anything. She would be better by and by, and forget that she ever cared for Arthur Leighton.

“At least,” and she spoke entreatingly now, “you will not demean yourself to let him know of the mistake. It would scarcely be womanly, and he may have gotten over it. Present circumstances seem to prove as much.”

Mrs. Meredith felt now that her secret was comparatively safe, and with her spirits lighter she kissed her niece lovingly and told her of a trip to Europe which she had in view, promising that Anna should go with her, and so not be at home when the marriage of Arthur and Lucy took place.

It was appointed for the 15th of January, that being the day when Lucy came of age, and the very afternoon succeeding Anna’s interview with Mr. Hastings the little lady came down to New York to direct about her bridal trousseau making, in the city. She was brimming over with happiness and her face was a perfect gleam of sunshine, when she came next day to Anna’s room, and throwing off her wrappings plunged at once into the subject uppermost in her thoughts, telling first how she and Arthur had quarrelled,—“not quarrelled as uncle and aunt Hetherton and lots of people do, but differed so seriously that I cried and had to give up, too,” she said. “I wanted you for bridesmaid, and do you think, he objected; not objected to you, but to bridesmaids generally, and he carried his point, so that we are just to stand up stiff and straight alone, except as you’ll all be round me in the aisle. You’ll be well by that time, and I want you very near to me,” Lucy said, squeezing the icy hand, whose coldness made her start and exclaim, “Why, Anna, how cold you are, and how pale you are looking. You have been so sick, and I am so well; it don’t seem quite right, does it? And Arthur, too, is so thin that I have coaxed him to raise whiskers to cover the hollows in his cheeks. He looks a heap better now, though he was always handsome. I do so wonder that you two never fell in love, and I tell him so most every time I see him, for I always think of you then.”

It was terrible to Anna to sit and hear all this, and the room grew dark as she listened, but she forced back her pain, and stroking the curly head almost resting on her lap, and said kindly, “You love him very much, don’t you, darling,—so much that it would be hard to give him up?”

“Yes, oh yes, I could not give him up now, except to God. I trust I could do that, though once I could not, I am sure,” and nestling closer to Anna, Lucy whispered to her of the hope that she was better than she used to be,—that daily intercourse with Arthur had not been without its effect, and now she believed she tried to do right from a higher motive than just to please him.

“God bless you, darling,” was Anna’s response, as she clasped the hand of the young girl, who was now far more worthy to be Arthur’s wife than once she had been.

If Anna had ever had a thought of telling Arthur, it would have been put aside by that interview with Lucy. She could not harm that pure, loving, trusting girl, and she sent her from her with a kiss and a blessing, praying silently that she might never know a shadow of the pain which she was suffering.

She had one years before, but since the summer day when she sent from her the white-faced man, whose heart she knew she had broken, it had been hardening,—searing over with a stiff crust which nothing, it seemed, could penetrate. And yet there were times when she was softened and wished that much which she had done might be blotted out from the great book in which even she believed. There was many a misdeed recorded there against her, she knew, and occasionally there stole over her a strange disquietude as to how she should confront them when they all came up before her. Usually she could cast such thoughts aside by a drive down gay Broadway, or at most by a call at Stewart’s, but the sight of Anna’s white face and the knowing what made it so white were a constant reproach, and conscience gradually wakened from its torpor, enough to whisper of the only restitution in her power, that of confession to Arthur. But from this she shrank nervously. She could not humble herself thus to any one, and she would not either, she said. Then came the fear lest by another than herself her guilt should come to light. What if Thornton Hastings should find her out? She was half afraid he suspected her now, and that gave her the heaviest pang of all, for she respected Thornton highly, and it would cost her much to lose his good opinion. She had lost him for her niece, but she could not spare him from herself, and so in sad perplexity, which wore upon her visibly, the autumn days went on until at last she sat one morning in her dressing-room and read in a foreign paper:

“Died at Strasburg, Aug. 31st, Edward Coleman, Esq. aged 46.”

That was all, but the paper dropped from the trembling hands, and the proud woman of the world bowed her head upon the cold marble of the table and wept aloud. She was not Mrs. Meredith now, she was Julia Ruthven again, and she stood with Edward Coleman out in the grassy orchard where the apple-blossoms were dropping from the trees, and the air was full of the insects’ hum and the song of mating birds. Many years had passed since then. She was the wealthy Mrs. Meredith now, and he was dead in Strasburg. He had been true to her to the last, for he had never married, and those who had met him abroad had brought back the same report of a “white-haired man, old before his time, and with a tired, sad look on his face.” That look she had written there, and she wept on as she recalled the past and murmured softly: “Poor Edward, I loved you all the while, but I sold myself for gold, and it turned your brown locks snowy white,—poor darling,—” and her hands moved up and down the folds of her cashmere robe as if it were the brown locks they were smoothing just as they used to do. Then came a thought of Anna, whose face wore much the look which Edward’s did when he went slowly from the orchard and left her there alone with the apple-blossoms dropping on her head, and the hum of the bees in her ear.

“I can at least do right in that respect,” she said. “I can undo the past to some extent and lessen the load of sin upon my shoulders. I will write to Arthur Leighton; I surely need tell no one else,—not yet, at least, lest he has outlived his love for Anna. I can trust to his discretion and to his honor too; he will not betray me, unless it is necessary, and then only to Anna. Edward would bid me do it if he could speak; he was some like Arthur Leighton.”

And so with the dead man in Strasburg before her eyes, Mrs. Meredith nerved herself to write to Arthur Leighton, confessing the fraud imposed upon him, imploring his forgiveness, and begging him to spare her as much as possible.

“I know from Anna’s own lips how much she has always loved you,” she wrote in conclusion, “but she does not know of the stolen letter, and I leave you to make such use of the knowledge as you shall think proper.”

She did not put in a single plea for poor little Lucy dancing so gayly over the mine just ready to explode. She was purely selfish still with all her qualms of conscience, and only thought of Anna, whom she would make happy at another’s sacrifice. So she never hinted that it was possible for Arthur to keep his word pledged to Lucy Harcourt, and as she finished her own letter and placed it in an envelope with the one which Arthur had sent to Anna, her thoughts leaped forward to the wedding she would give her niece,—a wedding not quite like that she had designed for Mrs. Thornton Hastings, but a quiet, elegant affair, just suited to a clergyman who was marrying a Ruthven.

Arthur had been spending the evening at Prospect hill. The Hethertons were there now, and would remain till after the 15th; and since they came the rector had found it even pleasanter calling there than it had been before with only his bride-elect to entertain him. Sure of Mr. Bellamy, Fanny had laid aside her sharpness and was exceedingly witty and brilliant, while, now that it was settled, the colonel was too thorough a gentleman to be otherwise than gracious to his future nephew, and Mrs. Hetherton was always polite and ladylike, so that the rector looked forward with a good deal of interest to the evenings he usually gave to Lucy, who, though satisfied to have him in her sight, still preferred the olden time when she had him all to herself, and was not disquieted with the fear that she was not learned enough for him, as she often was when she heard him talking with Fanny and her uncle of things she did not understand. This evening, however, the family were away and she received him alone, trying so hard to come up to his capacity, talking so intelligibly of the books she had been reading, and looking so lovely in her crimson winter dress, besides being so sweetly affectionate and confiding that for once since his engagement Arthur was more than content, and returned her modest caresses with a warmth he had not felt before. He was learning to love her very much, he thought, and when at last he took his leave and she went with him to the door there was an unwonted tenderness in his manner as he pushed her gently back, for the first snow of the season was falling and the large flakes dropped upon her hair, from which he brushed them carefully away.

“I cannot let my darling take cold,” he said, and Lucy felt a strange thrill of joy, for never before had he called her his darling, and sometimes she had feared that the love she received was not as great as the love she gave.

But she did not think so now, and in an ecstasy of joy she stood in the deep recess of the bay-window watching him as he went away through the moonlight and the feathery cloud of snow, wondering why, when she was so happy, there should cling to her a haunting presentiment that she and Arthur would never meet again just as they had parted. Arthur, on the contrary, was troubled with no such presentiment. Of Anna he hardly thought, or, if he did, the vision was obscured by the fair picture he had seen standing in the door with the snow-flakes resting on its hair like pearls in a golden cabinet. And Arthur thanked his God that he was beginning at last to feel right, that the solemn vows he was so soon to utter would not be a mockery. It was Arthur’s wish to teach to others how dark and mysterious are the ways of Providence, but he had not himself half learned that lesson in all its strange reality; but the lesson was coming on apace; each stride of his swift-footed beast brought him nearer and nearer to the great shock waiting for him upon his study-table, where his man had put it. He saw it the first thing on entering the room, but he did not take it up until the snow was brushed from his garments and he had seated himself by the cheerful fire blazing on the hearth. Then sitting in his easy-chair and moving the lamp nearer to him, he took Mrs. Meredith’s letter and broke the seal, starting as if a serpent had stung him when in the note enclosed he recognized his own handwriting, the same he had sent to Anna when his heart was as full of hope as the brown stalks, now beating against his windows with a dismal sound, were full of fragrant blossoms. Both had died since then, the roses and his hopes, and Arthur almost wished that he, too, were dead when he read Mrs. Meredith’s letter and saw the gulf he was treading. Like the waves of the sea his love for Anna came rolling back upon him, augmented and intensified by all that he had suffered, and by the terrible conviction that it could not be, although, alas, “it might have been.” He repeated these words over and over again, as, stupefied with pain, he sat gazing at vacancy, thinking how true was the couplet: