Thornton Hastings had proved a most treacherous knight, and overthrown his general’s plans entirely. Arthur’s letter had affected him strangely, for he readily guessed how deeply wounded his sensitive friend had been by Anna Ruthven’s refusal, while added to this was a fear lest Anna had been influenced by a thought of himself, and what might possibly result from an acquaintance. Thornton Hastings had been flattered and angled for until he had grown somewhat vain, and it did not strike him as at all improbable that the unsophisticated Anna should have designs upon him. “But I won’t give her a chance,” he said, when he finished Arthur’s letter. “I thought once I might like her, but I shan’t, and I’ll be revenged on her for refusing the best man that ever breathed. I’ll go to Newport instead of Saratoga, and so be clear of the entire Meredith clique, the Hethertons, the little Harcourt, and all.” This, then, was the secret of his being at the Ocean House. He was keeping away from Anna Ruthven, who never had heard of him but once, and that from Lucy Harcourt. After that scene in the Glen, where Anna had exclaimed against intriguing mothers and their bold, shame-faced daughters, Mrs. Meredith had been too wise a manœuvrer to mention Thornton Hastings, so that Anna was wholly ignorant of his presence at Newport, and looked up in unfeigned surprise at the tall, elegant man whom her aunt presented as Mr. Hastings. With all Thornton’s affected indifference, there was still a curiosity to see the girl who could say “no” to Arthur Leighton, and he did not wait long after receiving Mrs. Meredith’s card before going down to find her. “That’s the girl, I’ll lay a wager,” he thought of a high-colored, showily dressed hoyden, who was whirling around the room with Ned Peters, from Boston, and whoso corn-colored dress swept against his boots as he entered the parlor. How, then, was he disappointed in the apparition Mrs. Meredith presented as “my niece,” the modest, self possessed young girl, whose cheeks grew not a whit the redder, and whose pulse did not quicken at the sight of him, though a gleam of something like curiosity shone in the brown eyes which scanned him so quietly. She was thinking of Lucy, and her injunction “not to speak to the _hateful_ if she saw him;” but she did speak to him, and Mrs. Meredith fanned herself complacently as she saw how fast they became acquainted. “You don’t dance,” Mr. Hastings said, as she declined an invitation from Ned Peters, whom she had met at Saratoga. “I am glad, for you will perhaps walk with me outside upon the piazza. You won’t take cold, I think,” and he glanced thoughtfully at the white neck and shoulders gleaming beneath the gauzy muslin.