“And I am to marry Arthur,” Lucy had said again; but this time there was no sign that she was understood, and that afternoon she went back to Hanover loaded with tickets for the children of St. Mark’s and new books for the Sunday-school, and accompanied by Valencia, who, having had a serious difference with her mistress, Mrs. Meredith, had offered her services to Miss Harcourt, and been at once accepted. That was near the middle of October; now it was the last, and Anna was so much better that she sat up for an hour or more and listened with some degree of interest to what Mrs. Meredith told her of the days when she lay so unconscious of all that was passing around her, never heeding the kindly voice of Thornton Hastings, who more than once had stood by her pillow with his hand on her feverish brow, and tokens of whose thoughtfulness were visible in the choice bouquets he sent each day, with notes of anxious inquiry when he did not come himself. Anna had not seen him yet since her convalescence. She would rather not see any one until strong enough to talk, she said. And so Thornton waited patiently for the interview she had promised him when she should be stronger, but every day he sent her fruit, and flowers, and books which he thought would interest her, and which always made her cheeks grow hot and her heart beat regretfully, for she knew of the answer she must give him when he came, and she shrank from wounding him. “He is too good, too noble, to have an unwilling wife,” she thought; but that did not make it the less hard to tell him so, and when at last she was well enough to see him, she waited his coming nervously, starting when she heard his step, and trembling like a leaf as he drew near her chair. It was a very thin, wasted hand which he took in his, holding it for a moment between his own, and then laying it gently back upon her lap. He had come for the answer to a question put six weeks before, and Anna gave it to him,—kindly, considerately, but decidedly. She could not be his wife, she said, because she did not love him as he ought to be loved. “It is nothing personal,” she added, working nervously at the heavy fringe of her shawl. “I respect you more than any man I ever knew,—except one; and had I met you years ago,—before—before—” “I understand you,” Thornton said, coming to her aid. “You have tried to love me, but you cannot, because your affections are given to another.” Anna bowed her head in silence; then, after a moment, she continued: “You must forgive me, Mr. Hastings, for not telling you this at once. I did not know then but I could love you; at least, I meant to try, for you see this other one,”—the fingers got terribly tangled in the fringe as Anna gasped for breath and went on,—“he does not know, and never will,—that is,—he never cared for me, nor guessed how foolish I was to give him my love unsought.”