unbidden to her eye as she told him how lonely she would be without him.
Hers was a nature as transparent as glass, and the young man, who for days had paced the ship's deck so moodily, was fighting back the thoughts which had whispered that in his intercourse with her he had not been all guiltless, and that if in her girlish heart there was a feeling for him stronger than that of friendship he had helped to give it life.
Time and absence and Anna Ruthven had obliterated all such thoughts till now, when Lucy herself had brought them back again with her winsome ways, and her evident intention to begin just where they had left off.
"Let Anna tell me yes, and I will at once proclaim our engagement, which will relieve me from all embarrassments in that quarter," the clergyman was thinking, just as his housekeeper came up, bringing him two notes—one in a strange handwriting, and the other in the graceful, running hand which he recognized as Lucy Harcourt's.
This he opened first, reading as follows:
Prospect Hill, June—.
"Mr. Leighton: Dear Sir—Cousin Fanny is to have a picnic down in the west woods to-morrow afternoon, and she requests the pleasure of your presence. Mrs. Meredith and Miss Ruthven are to be invited. Do come.
"Yours truly,
"Lucy."
Yes, he would go, and if Anna's answer had not come before, he would ask her for it. There would be plenty of opportunities down in those deep woods. On the whole, it would be pleasanter to hear the answer from her own lips, and see the blushes on her cheeks when he tried to look into her eyes.
The imaginative rector could almost see those eyes, and feel the touch of her hand as he took the other note—the one which Mrs. Meredith had shut herself in her bedroom to write, and sent slyly by Valencia, who was to tell no one where she had been.
A gleam of intelligence shot from Valencia's eyes as she took the note and carried it safely to the parsonage, never yielding to the temptation to read it, just as she had read the one abstracted from the book, returning it when read to her mistress's pocket, where she had found it while the family were at church.
Mrs. Meredith's note was as follows:
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
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