The Rector of St. Marks

"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.