“Miss Anna Ruthven,” she said. “He writes a fair hand;” and then, as the thought, which at first was scarce a thought, kept growing in her mind, she turned it over, and found that, owing to some defect, it had become unsealed, and the lid of the envelope lay temptingly open before her. “I would never break a seal,” she said, “but surely, as her protector, and almost mother, I may read what this minister has written to my niece.” And so she read what he had written, while a scowl of disapprobation marred the smoothness of her brow. “It is as I feared. Once let her see this, and Thornton Hastings may woo in vain. But it shall not be. It is my duty, as the sister of her dead father, to interfere, and not let her throw herself away.” Perhaps Mrs. Meredith really felt that she was doing her duty. At all events she did not give herself much time to reason upon the matter, for, startled by a slight movement in the room directly opposite, the door of which was ajar, she thrust the letter into her pocket, and turned to see—Valencia, standing with her back to her, and arranging her hair in a mirror which hung upon the wall. “She could not have seen me; and, even if she did, she would not suspect the truth,” was the guilty woman’s thought, as with the stolen missive in her pocket she went down to the parlor, and tried, by petting Anna more than her wont, to still the voice of conscience, which clamored loudly of the wrong, and urged a restoration of the letter to the place whence it was taken. But the golden moment fled, and when, later in the evening, Anna went up to her chamber, and opened the book which the rector had brought, she never suspected how near she had been to the great happiness she had sometimes dared to hope for, or dreamed how fervently Arthur Leighton prayed that night, that if it were possible, God would grant the boon he craved above all others,—the priceless gift of Anna Ruthven’s love. CHAPTER III. SUNDAY.