"Guilty, verily, I am guilty, in leading her on, if I meant nothing by it," he had written against himself, pausing in his sermon to write it just as Lucy came in, appealing so prettily to him to know why he had neglected her so long. She was very beautiful this morning, and Arthur felt his heart beat rapidly as he looked at her, and thought most any man who had never known Anna Ruthven would be glad to gather that bright creature in his own arms and know she was his own. One long, long sigh to the memory of all he had hoped for once--one bitter pang as he remembered Anna and that twilight hour in the church and then he made a mad plunge in the dark and said: "Lucy, do you know people are beginning to talk about my seeing you so much?" "Well, let them talk. Who cares?" Lucy replied, with a good deal of asperity of manner for her, for that very morning the old housekeeper at Prospect Hill had ventured to remonstrate with her for "running after the parson." "Pray, where is the wrong? What harm can come of it?" and she tossed her head pettishly. "None, perhaps," Arthur replied, "if one could keep his affections under control. But if either of us should learn to love the other very much, and the love was not reciprocated, harm would surely come of that. At least, that was the view Captain Humphreys took of the matter when he was speaking to me about it." There were red spots on Lucy's face, but her lips were very white, and the buttons on her riding dress rose and fell rapidly with the beating of her heart as she looked steadily at Arthur. Was he going to send her from him, send her back to the insipid life she had lived before she knew him? It was too terrible to believe, and the great tears rolled slowly down her cheeks. Then, as a flash of pride came to her aid, she dashed them away, and said haughtily: "And so, for fear I shall fall in love with you, and be ruined, perhaps, you are sacrificing both comfort and freedom, shutting yourself up here among your books and studies to the neglect of other duties? But it need be so no longer. The necessity for it, if it existed once, certainly does not now. I will not be in your way. Forgive me that I ever have been." Lucy's voice began to tremble as she gathered up her riding-habit and turned to find her gauntlets. One of them had dropped upon the floor, between the table and the rector, and as she stooped to reach it her curls almost swept the young man's lap. "Let me get it for you," he said, hastily pushing back his chair, and awkwardly entangling his foot in her dress, so that when she rose she stumbled backward, and would have fallen but for the arm he quickly passed around her. Something in the touch of that quivering form completed the work of temptation, and he held it for an instant while she said to him: "Please, let me go, sir!" "No, Lucy, I can't let you go; I want you to stay with me."