"Down in the Glen with Mrs. Meredith. Will you be pleased to wait
while I call them?" Esther said, in reply to the rector's inquiries
for Miss Ruthven.
"No, I will find them myself," Mr. Leighton rejoined. Then, as he
thought how impossible it would be to give the letter to Anna in the
presence of her aunt, he slipped it into the book which 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.