“I know I am going to like you. I can tell directly I see a person,—can’t I, Arthur?” and kissing her hand to Mrs. Meredith, Anna, and the rector, too, she sprang into the carriage, and was whirled rapidly away. “Who is she?” Anna asked, and Mr. Leighton replied: “She is an orphan niece of Colonel Hetherton’s and a great heiress, I believe, though I never paid much attention to the absurd stories told concerning her wealth.” “You met in Europe,” Mrs. Meredith said, and he replied: “Yes, she has been quite an invalid, and has spent four years abroad, where I accidently met her. It was a very pleasant party, and I was induced to join it, though I was with them in all not more than four months.” He told this very rapidly, and an acute observer would have seen that he did not care particularly to talk of Lucy Harcourt, with Anna for an auditor. She was walking very demurely at his side, pondering in her mind the circumstances which could have brought the rector and Lucy Harcourt in such familiar relations as to warrant her calling him Arthur, and appearing so delighted to see him. “Can it be there was anything between them?” she thought, and her heart began to harden against the innocent Lucy, at that very moment chatting so pleasantly of her and of Arthur, too, replying to Mrs. Hetherton, who suggested that _Mr. Leighton_ would be more appropriate for a clergyman: “I shall say Arthur, for he told me I might when we were in Rome. I could not like him as well if I called him Mr. Leighton. Isn’t he splendid though in his gown, and wasn’t his sermon grand?” “What was the text?” asked Mr. Bellamy mischievously, and with a toss of her golden curls and a merry twinkle of her eyes, Lucy replied, “Simon, Simon, lovest thou me?”