"Yes, I mean to give him up. I have been over the entire ground many
times, even to the deep humiliation of what people will say, and I
have come each time to the same conclusion. It is right that Arthur
should be released and I shall release him."
"And you--what will you do?" Fanny asked, gazing in wonder and awe at
the young girl, who answered: "I do not know; I have not thought. I guess God will take care of
that."
He would, indeed, take care of that just as he took care of her,
inclining the Hetherton family to be so kind and tender towards her,
and keeping Arthur from the house during the time when the Christmas
decorations were completed and the Christmas festival was held.
Many were the inquiries made for her, and many the thanks and wishes
for her speedy restoration sent her by those whom she had so
bountifully remembered.
Thornton Hastings, too, who had come to town and was present at the
church on Christmas-eve, asked for her with almost as much interest as
Arthur, although the latter had hoped she was not seriously ill and
expressed a regret that she was not there, saying he should call on
her on the morrow after the morning service.
"Oh, I cannot see him here. I must tell him there, at the rectory, in
the very room where he asked Anna and me both to be his wife," Lucy
said when Fanny reported Arthur's message. "I am able to go there and
I must. It will be fine sleighing to-morrow. See, the snow is falling
now," and pushing back the curtain, Lucy looked dreamily out upon the
fast whitening ground, sighing, as she remembered the night when the
first snowflakes fell and she stood watching them with Arthur at her
side.
Fanny did not oppose her cousin, and, with a kiss upon the
blue-veined forehead, she went to her own room, leaving Lucy to think
over for the hundredth time what she would say to Arthur.