“And so for fear I shall fall in love with you, you are sacrificing both comfort and freedom, and shutting yourself up with your books and studies to the neglect of other duties. But it need be so no longer. The necessity for it, if it existed once, certainly does not now. I will not be in your way; forgive me that I ever have been.” Lucy’s voice began to tremble as she gathered up her riding-habit and turned to find her gauntlets. One of them had dropped upon the floor between the table and the rector, and as she stooped to reach it her curls almost swept the young man’s lap. “Let me get it for you,” he said, hastily pushing back his chair and awkwardly entangling his foot in her long sweeping dress, so that when she arose she stumbled backward and would have fallen, but for the arm he quickly passed around her. Something in the touch of that quivering form completed the work of temptation, and he held it for an instant, when she said to him pettishly: “Please let me go, sir.” “No, Lucy, I can’t let you go. I want you to stay with me.” Instantly the drooping head was uplifted, and Lucy’s eyes looked into his with such a wistful, pleading, wondering look that Arthur saw or thought he saw his duty plain, and gently touching his lips to the brow glistening so white within their reach, he continued: “There is a way to stop the gossip and make it right for me to see you. Promise to be my wife, and not even Captain Humphreys can say aught against it.” Arthur’s voice trembled now, for the mention of Captain Humphreys had brought a thought of Anna, whose eyes seemed for an instant to look reproachfully upon that wooing. But he had gone too far to retract; he had only to wait for Lucy’s answer. There was no deception about her; hers was a nature as clear as crystal, and with a gush of glad tears she promised to be the rector’s wife; and hiding her face on his bosom, told him, brokenly, how unworthy she was of him; how foolish, and how unsuited to the place, but promising to do the best she could not to bring him into disgrace on account of her shortcomings. “With the knowledge that you love me I can do anything,” she said, and her white hand crept slowly into the cold, clammy one which lay so listlessly on Arthur’s lap. He was already repenting, for he felt that it was sin to take that warm, trusting, loving heart in exchange for the cold, half lifeless one he should render in return, and in which scarcely a pulse of joy was beating, even though he held his promised wife; and she was fair and beautiful as ever promised wife could be. “But I can make her happy, and I will,” he thought, pressing the warm fingers which quivered to his touch. But he did not kiss her again; he could not for the eyes, which still seemed looking at him and asking what he did. There was a strange spell about those phantom eyes, and they made him say to Lucy, who was now sitting demurely at his side: