“Let Anna tell me yes, and I will at once proclaim our engagement, which will relieve me from all embarrassments in that quarter,” the clergymen was thinking, just as his housekeeper came up, bringing him two notes, one in a strange handwriting, and the other in the graceful running hand which he recognized as Lucy Harcourt’s. This he opened first, reading as follows: “PROSPECT HILL, June —.” “MR. LEIGHTON.—DEAR SIR:—Cousin Fanny is to have a picnic down in the west woods to-morrow afternoon, and she requests the pleasure of your presence. Mrs. Meredith and Miss Ruthven are to be invited. Do come. “Yours truly, “LUCY.” Yes, he would go, and if Anna’s answer did not come before, he would ask her for it. There would be plenty of opportunities down in those deep woods. On the whole, it would be pleasanter to hear the words from her own lips, and see the blushes on her cheeks when he tried to look into her eyes. The imaginative rector could almost see those eyes, and feel the touch of her hand as he took the other note, which Mrs. Meredith had shut herself in her room to write, and sent slyly by Valencia, who was to tell no one where she had been. A gleam of intelligence had shone in Valencia’s eyes as she took the note and carried it safely to the parsonage, never yielding to the temptation to read it as she had read the one found in her mistress’s pocket, while the family were at church. Mrs. Meredith’s note was as follows: “MY DEAR MR. LEIGHTON:—It is my niece’s wish that I answer the letter you were so kind as to enclose in the book left for her last Saturday. She desires me to say that though she has a very great regard for you as her clergyman and friend, she cannot be your wife, and she regrets exceedingly if she has in any way led you to construe the interest she has always manifested in you into a deeper feeling. “She begs me to say that it gives her great pain to refuse one as noble and good as she knows you to be, and she only does it because she cannot find in her heart the love without which no marriage can be happy. “She is really very wretched about it, because she fears she may lose your friendship, which she prizes so much; and, as a proof that she will not, she asks that the subject may never, in any way, be alluded to; that when you meet it may be exactly as heretofore, without a word or sign on your part that you ever offered her the highest honor a man can offer a woman. “And I am sure, my dear Mr. Leighton, that you will accede to her wishes. I am very sorry it has occurred, sorry for you both, and especially sorry for you; but believe me, you will get over it in time, and come to see that my niece is not a proper person to be a clergyman’s wife. “Come and see us as usual. You will find Anna appearing very natural.