This was Lucy's life, the one she preferred to Saratoga, and they left her to enjoy it, somewhat to Arthur's discomfiture, for much as he valued her society, he would a little rather she had gone when the Hethertons went, for he could not be insensible to the remarks which were being made by the curious villagers, who watched this new flirtation, as they called it, and wondered if their minister had forgotten Anna Ruthven. He had not forgotten Anna, and many a time was her loved name upon his lips and a thought of her in his heart, while he never returned from an interview with Lucy that he did not contrast the two and sigh for the olden time, when Anna was his co-worker instead of pretty Lucy Harcourt. And yet there was about the latter a powerful fascination, which he found it hard to resist. It rested him just to look at her, she was so fresh, so bright, so beautiful, and then she flattered his self-love by the unbounded deference she paid to his opinions, studying all his tastes and bringing her own will into perfect subjection to his, until she scarcely could be said to have a thought or feeling which was not a reflection of his own. And so the flirtation, which at first had been a one-sided affair, began to assume a more serious form; the rector went oftener to Prospect Hill, while the carriage from Prospect Hill stood daily at the gate of the rectory, and people said it was a settled thing, or ought to be, gossiping about it until old Captain Humphreys, Anna's grandfather, conceived it his duty as senior warden of St. Mark's, to talk with the young rector and know "what his intentions were." "You have none?" he said, fixing his mild eyes reproachfully upon his clergyman, who winced a little beneath the gaze. "Then if you have no intentions, my advice to you is, that you quit it and let the gal alone, or you'll ruin her, if she ain't sp'ilt already, as some of the women folks say she is. It don't do no gal any good to have a chap, and specially a minister, gallyvantin' after her, as I must say you've been after this one for the last few weeks. She's a pretty little creature, and I don't blame you for liking her. It makes my old blood stir faster when she comes purring around me with her soft ways and winsome face, and so I don't wonder at you; but when you say you've no intentions, I blame you greatly. You orter have--excuse my plainness. I'm an old man who likes my minister, and don't want him to go wrong, and then I feel for her, left alone by all her folks--more's the shame to them, and more's the harm for you to tangle up her affections, as you are doing, if you are not in earnest; and I speak for her just as I should want some one to speak for Anna."