Anna looked up amazed at this frank avowal, which few would ever have made, even though in their hearts they were far vainer of their beauty than was Mildred Atherton of hers. Was she really silly, or was she wholly artless and childlike in her manner of expression? Anna could not decide, and with a growing interest in the stranger, she listened while Mildred went on: “In one of his letters last May Herbert said so much of Anna Burroughs, with her eyes of blue and golden hair, calling her a ‘Lily of the Valley,’ and asking, all in play, you know, if I should feel very badly if he should elope some day with his Lily. It shocks you, don’t it!” she said, as Anna started with a sudden exclamation, “But he did not mean it. He only tried to tease me, and for a time it did make in my heart a little round spot of pain which burned like fire, for though Herbert has some bad habits and naughty ways, I love him very dearly. He is always better with me. He says I do him good, though he calls me a puritan, and that time when the burning spot was in my heart, I used to go away and pray, that if Herbert did not like me as he ought, God would incline him to do so. Once I prayed for you, whom I had never seen,” and the little soft hand stole up to Anna’s bowed head smoothing the golden locks caressingly, “You’ll think me foolish, but thoughts of you really troubled me then, when I was weak and nervous, for I was just recovering from sickness, and so I prayed that the Lily of the Valley might not care for Herbert, might not come between us, and I know God heard me just as well as if it had been my own father of whom I asked a favor. Perhaps it is not having any father or mother which makes me take every little trouble to God. Do you do so, Anna? Do you tell all your cares to him?” Alas for conscience-stricken Anna, who had not prayed for so very, very long! What could she say? Nothing, except to dash the bitter tears from her eyes and answer, sobbingly, “I used to do so once, but now—oh, Miss Atherton! now I am so hard, so wicked, I dare not pray!” In great perplexity Mildred looked at her a moment, and then said, sorrowfully. “Just because I was hard and wicked, I should want to pray—to ask that if I had done anything bad I might be forgiven, or if I had intended to do wrong, I might be kept from doing it.” Mildred little guessed how keen a pang her words “or _intended_ to do wrong” inflicted upon the repenting Anna, who involuntarily stretched her hands toward the young girl as towards something which, if she did but grasp it, would save her from herself. Mildred took the hands between her own, and pressing them gently, said: “I don’t know why you feel so badly, neither can I understand how anything save sin can make you unhappy when that good man is almost your husband. You must love him very much, do you not?”