The Rector of St. Marks

But God heard them just the same, and knew his child was asking that

Anna might forget him, if to remember him was pain; that she might

learn to love another far worthier than he had ever been.

He did not think of Mrs. Meredith; he had no feeling of resentment

then; he was too wholly crushed to care how his ruin had been brought

about, and, long after the wood fire on the hearth had turned to cold,

gray ashes, he knelt upon the floor and battled with his grief, and

when the morning broke it found him still in the cheerless room where

he had passed the entire night and from which he went forth

strengthened, as he hoped, to do what he believed to be his duty. This

was on Saturday, and on the Sunday following there was no service at

St. Mark's. The rector was sick, the sexton said; "hard sick, too, he

had heard," and the Hetherton carriage, with Lucy in it, drove swiftly

to the rectory, where the quiet and solitude awed and frightened Lucy

as she entered the house and asked the housekeeper how Mr. Leighton

was.

"It is very sudden," she said. "He was perfectly well when he left me

on Friday night. Please tell him I am here."

The housekeeper shook her head. Her master's orders were that no one

but the doctor should be admitted, she said, repeating what Arthur had

told her in anticipation of just such an infliction as this.

But Lucy was not to be denied. Arthur was hers, his sickness was

hers, his suffering was hers, and see him she would.

"He surely did not mean me when he asked that no one should be

admitted. Tell him it is I; it is Lucy," she said with an air of

authority, which, in one so small, so pretty and so child-like, only

amused Mrs. Brown, who departed with the message, while Lucy sat down

with her feet upon the stove and looked around the sitting-room,

thinking that it was smaller and poorer than the one at Prospect Hill,

and how she would remodel it when she was mistress there.

"He says you can come," was the word Mrs. Brown brought back, and,

with a gleam of triumph in her eye and a toss of the head, which said,

"I told you so," Lucy went softly into the darkened room and shut the

door behind her.

Arthur had half expected this and had nerved himself to meet it, but

the cold sweat stood on his face and his heart throbbed painfully as

Lucy bent over him and Lucy's tears fell on his face while she took

his feverish hands in hers and murmured softly, "Poor, dear Arthur, I

am so sorry for you, and if I could I'd bear the pain so willingly."