It was nothing but a flirtation he knew, for in his inmost soul he absolved himself from ever having had a thought of matrimony connected with Lucy Harcourt. He had admired her greatly and loved to wander with her amid the Alpine scenery, listening to her wild bursts of enthusiasm, and watching the kindling light in her blue eyes, and the color coming to her thin, pale cheeks, as she gazed upon some scene of grandeur, and clung close to him as for protection, when the path was fraught with peril. Afterwards in Venice, beneath the influence of those glorious moonlight nights, he had been conscious of a deeper feeling, which, had he tarried longer at the syren’s side, might have ripened into love. But he left her just in time to escape what he felt would have been a most unfortunate affair for him, for sweet and beautiful as she was, Lucy was not the wife for a clergyman to choose. She was not like Anna Ruthven, whom both young and old had said was so suitable for him. “And just because she is suitable, I may not win her, perhaps,” he thought, as he paced up and down his library, wondering when she would answer his letter, and wondering next how he could persuade Lucy Harcourt that between the young theological student, sailing in a gondola through the streets of Venice, and the rector of St. Mark’s, there was a vast difference; that while the former might be Arthur with perfect propriety, the latter should be Mr. Leighton, in Anna’s presence, at least. And yet the rector of St. Mark’s was conscious of a pleasurable emotion, even now, as he recalled the time when she had, at his request, first called him Arthur, her birdlike voice hesitating just a little, and her soft eyes looking coyly up to him, as she said: “I am afraid that Arthur is hardly the name by which to call a clergyman.” “I am not in orders yet, so let me be Arthur to you. I love to hear you call me so, and you to me shall be Lucy,” was his reply. A mutual clasp of hands had sealed the compact, and that was the nearest to a love-making of anything which had passed between them, if we except the time when he had said good-by, and wiped away the tear which came unbidden to her eye as she told him how lonely she should be without him. Hers was a nature as transparent as glass, and the young man, who for days had paced the ship’s deck so moodily, was fighting back the thoughts which whispered that in his intercourse with her he had not been all guileless, and that if in her girlish heart there was feeling for him stronger than that of friendship, he had helped to give it life. Time and absence and Anna Ruthven had obliterated all such thoughts till now, when Lucy herself had brought them back again with her winsome ways, and her evident intention to begin just where they had left off.