“You see I am telling you all this, just as if you did not know Miss Anna’s antecedents even better than myself; but possibly you do not know that, having arrived at a suitable age, she is this summer to be introduced into society at Saratoga, while I am expected to fall in love with her at once, and make her Mrs. Hastings before another winter. Now, in your straightforward way of putting things, don’t imagine that Mrs. Meredith has deliberately told me all this, for she has not; but I understand her perfectly, and know exactly what she expects me to do. Whether I do it or not depends partly upon how I like Miss Anna, partly upon how she likes me, and partly upon yourself. “You know I was always famous for presentiments or fancies, as you termed them, and the latest of these is that you like Anna Ruthven. Do you? Tell me, honor bright, and by the memory of the many scrapes you got me out of, and the many more you kept me from getting into, I will treat Miss Anna as gingerly and brotherly as if she were already your wife. I like her picture, which I have seen, and believe I shall like the girl, but if you say that by looking at her with longing eyes I shall be guilty of breaking some one of the ten commandments,—I don’t know which,—why, then, hands off at once. That’s fair, and will prove to you that, although not a parson like yourself, there is still a spark of honor, if not of goodness, in the breast of “Yours truly, “THORNTON HASTINGS. “If you were here this afternoon, I’d take you to drive after a pair of bays, which are to sweep the stakes at Saratoga this summer, and I’d treat you to a finer cigar than often finds its way to Hanover. Shall I send you out a box, or would your people pull down the church about the ears of a minister wicked enough to smoke. Again adieu. “T. H.”