The Rector of St. Marks | Page 5

he bade Esther
take to Miss Ruthven's room.
Knowing how honest and faithful Esther was, the rector felt that he
could trust her without fear for the safety of his letter, sought the Glen,
where the tell-tale blushes which burned on Anna's cheek at sight of
him more than compensated for the coolness with which Mrs. Meredith
greeted him. She, too, had detected Anna's embarrassment, and when
the stranger was presented to her as "Mr. Leighton, our clergyman," the
secret was out.
"Why is it that since the beginning of time girls have run wild after
young ministers?" was her mental comment, as she bowed to Mr.
Leighton, and then quietly inspected his personnel.
There was nothing about Arthur Leighton's appearance with which she
could find fault. He was even finer looking than Thornton Hastings, her
beau ideal of a man, and as he stood a moment by Anna's side, looking
down upon her, the woman of the world acknowledged to herself that
they were a well-assorted pair, and as across the chasm of twenty years
there came back to her an episode in her life, when, on just such a day
as this, she had answered "no" to one as young and worthy as Arthur
Leighton, while all the time the heart was clinging to him, she softened
for a moment, and by the memory of the weary years passed with the
rich old man whose name she bore, she was tempted to leave alone the
couple standing there before her, and looking into each other's eyes
with a look which she could not mistake. But when she remembered
that Arthur was only a poor clergyman, and thought of that house on

Madison Square which Thornton Hastings owned, the softened mood
was changed, and Arthur Leighton's chance with her was gone.
Awhile they talked together in the Glen, and then walked back to the
farmhouse, where the rector bade them good evening, after casually
saying to Anna:
"I have brought the book you spoke of when I was here last. You will
find it in your room, where I asked Esther to take it."
That Mr. Leighton should bring her niece a book did not seem strange
at all, but that he should be so very thoughtful as to tell Esther to take it
to her room struck her as rather odd, and as the practiced war-horse
scents the battle from afar, so Mrs. Meredith at once suspected
something wrong, and felt a curiosity to know what the book could be.
It was lying on Anna's table as she reached the door on her way to her
own room, and, pausing for a moment, she entered the chamber, took it
in her hands, read the title page, and then opened it to where the letter
lay.
"Miss Anna Ruthven," she said. "He writes a fair hand;" and then, as
the thought, which at first was scarce a thought, kept growing in her
mind, she turned it over, and found that, owing to some defect, it had
become unsealed and the lid of the envelope lay temptingly open before
her. "I would never break a seal," she said, "but surely, as her protector
and almost mother, I may read what this minister has written to my
niece."
She read what he had written, while a scowl of disapprobation marred
the smoothness of her brow.
"It is as I feared. Once let her see this, and Thornton Hastings may woo
in vain. But it shall not be. It is my duty as the sister of her dead father,
to interfere and not let her throw herself away."
Perhaps Mrs. Meredith really felt that she was doing her duty. At all
events, she did not give herself much time to reason upon the matter,

for, startled by a slight movement in the room directly opposite, the
door of which was ajar, she thrust the letter into her pocket and turned
to see--Valencia, standing with her back to her, and arranging her hair
in a mirror which hung upon the wall.
"She could not have seen me; and, even if she did, she would not
suspect the truth," was the guilty woman's thought, as, with the stolen
missive in her pocket, she went down to the parlor and tried, by petting
Anna more than her wont, to still the voice of conscience which
clamored loudly of the wrong, and urged a restoration of the letter to
the place whence it was taken.
But the golden moment fled, and when, later in the evening, Anna went
up to her chamber and opened the book which the rector had brought,
she never suspected how near she had been to the great happiness she
had sometimes dared to hope for, or dreamed how fervently Arthur
Leighton prayed that