The Rector of St. Marks

Frank and outspoken as a child, she acted as she felt, and did try on

the bridal dress, screaming with pleased delight when Valencia

fastened the veil and let its fleecy folds fall gracefully around her.

"I wonder what Arthur will think, I do so wish he was here," she had

said, ordering a hand-glass brought that she might see herself from

behind and know just how much her dress did trail, and how it looked

beneath the costly veil.

She was very beautiful in her bridal robes, and she kept them on till

Fanny began to chide her for her vanity, and, even then, she lingered

before the mirror, as if loath to take them off.

"I don't believe in presentiments," she said to Fanny; "but, do you

know, it seems to me just as if I should never wear this again," and

she smoothed thoughtfully the folds of the heavy silk she had just

laid upon the bed. "I don't know what can happen to prevent it, unless

Arthur should die. He was so pale last Sunday and seemed so weak that

I shuddered every time I looked at him. I mean to drive round there

this afternoon," she continued. "I suppose it is too cold for him to

venture as far as here, and he has no carriage, either."

She went to the parsonage that afternoon, and the women in the church

saw her as she drove by, the gorgeous colors of her carriage blanket

flashing in the wintry sunshine just as the diamonds flashed upon the

hand she waved gayly towards them.

There was a little too much of the lady patroness about her quite to

suit the plain Hanoverians, especially those who were neither high

enough or low enough to be honored with her notice, and they returned

to their wreathmaking and gossip, wondering under their breath if it

would not, on the whole, have been just as well if their clergyman had

married Anna Ruthven instead of this fine city girl with her Parisian

manners.

A gleam of intelligence shot from the gray eyes of Valencia, who was

in a most unreasonable mood.

"She did not like to stain her hands with the nasty hemlock more than

some other folks," she had said, when, after the trying on of the

bridal dress, Lucy had remonstrated with her for some duty neglected,

and then bidden her to go to the church and help if she were needed.

"I must certainly dismiss you," Lucy had said, wondering how Mrs.

Meredith had borne so long with the insolent girl, who went

unwillingly to the church, where she was at work when the carriage

drove by.

She had thought many times of the letter she had read, and, more than

once, when particularly angry, it had been upon her lips to tell her

mistress that she was not the first whom Mr. Leighton had asked to be

his wife, if, indeed, she was his choice at all; but there was

something in Lucy's manner which held her back; besides which, she

was, perhaps, unwilling to confess to her own meanness in reading the

stolen letter.