Quick as a flash of lightning the hot blood mounted to his face, while Fanny cast upon him a searching glance as if she would read him through. Fanny Hetherton would have given much to know the answer which Mr. Simon Bellamy mentally gave to that question, put by one whom he had known but little more than three months. It was not fair for Lucy to steal away all Fanny’s beaux, as she surely had been doing ever since her feet touched the soil of the New World, and truth to tell Fanny had borne it very well, until young Mr. Bellamy showed signs of desertion. Then the spirit of resistance was roused, and she watched her lover narrowly, gnashing her teeth sometimes when she saw his ill-concealed admiration for her sprightly little cousin, who could say and do with perfect impunity so many things which in another would have been improper to the last degree. She was a tolerably correct reader of human nature, and from the moment she witnessed the meeting between Lucy and the rector of St. Mark’s she took courage, for she readily guessed the channel in which her cousin’s preference ran. The rector, however, she could not read so well; but few men she knew could withstand the fascinations of her cousin, backed as they were by the glamour of half a million; and though her mother, and possibly her father too, would be shocked at the _mésalliance_ and throw obstacles in its way, she was capable of removing them all, and she would do it, too, sooner than lose the only man she had ever cared for. These were Fanny’s thoughts as she rode home from church that Sunday afternoon, and by the time Prospect Hill was reached Lucy Harcourt could not have desired a more powerful ally than she possessed in the person of her resolute, strong-willed cousin. CHAPTER IV. BLUE MONDAY. It was to all intents and purposes “blue Monday” with the rector of St. Mark’s, for aside from the weariness and exhaustion which always followed his two services on Sunday, and his care of the Sunday-school, there was a feeling of disquiet and depression, occasioned partly by that _rencontre_ with pretty Lucy Harcourt, and partly by the uncertainty as to what Anna’s answer might be. He had seen the look of displeasure on her face as she stood watching him and Lucy, and though to many this would have given hope, it only added to his nervous fears lest his suit should be denied. He was sorry that Lucy Harcourt was in the neighborhood, and sorrier still for her tenacious memory, which had evidently treasured up every incident which he could wish forgotten. With Anna Ruthven absorbing every thought and feeling of his heart, it was not pleasant to remember what had been a genuine flirtation between himself and the sparkling belle he had met among the Alps.