The Rector of St. Marks

It was Arthur's work to teach 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 to the great shock

waiting for him upon the study table, where Thomas, 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 warmed

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 inclosed, he recognized his own

handwriting, the same he had sent to Anna when his heart was so 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 his

feet were 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 the words over and over again, as stupified with pain, he

sat gazing at vacancy, thinking how true was the couplet-"Of all sad words of tongue and pen,

The saddest are these, it might have been."

He could not even pray at once, his brain was so confused, but when,

at last, the white, quivering lips could move, and the poor aching

heart could pray, he only whispered, "God help me to do right," and by

that prayer he knew that for a single instant there had crept across

his mind the possibility of sacrificing Lucy, who loved and trusted

him so much. But only for an instant. He could not cast her from him,

though to take her now, knowing what he did, were almost death itself.

"But God can help me to bear it," he cried; then, falling upon his

knees, with his face bowed to the floor, the Rector of St. Mark's

prayed as he had never prayed before--first for himself, whose need

was greatest, and then for Lucy, that she might never know what making

her happy had cost him, and then for Anna, whose name he could not

speak. "That other one," he called her, and his heart kept swelling in

his throat and preventing his utterance, so that the words he would

say never reached his lips.