“Why, child, what is the matter? I heard you was sick, but did not s’spose ’twas anything very bad. You are paler than a ghost,” Mrs. Brown exclaimed, as she tried to unfasten Lucy’s hood and cloak and lead her to the fire. But Lucy was not cold, and would rather go at once to Arthur’s room. So Mrs. Brown made no objection, though she wondered if the girl was crazy as she went back to her fowls and Christmas pudding, and left Lucy to find her way alone to Arthur’s study, which looked so like its owner, with his dressing-gown across the lounge just where he had thrown it, his slippers on the rug, and his arm-chair standing near the table, where he had sat when he asked Lucy to be his wife, and where she now sat down, panting heavily for breath and gazing drearily around with the look of a frightened bird when seeking for some avenue of escape from an appalling danger. There _was_ no escape, and with a moan she laid her head upon the writing-table, and prayed that Arthur might come quickly while she had sense and strength to tell him. She heard his step at last, and rose up to meet him, smiling a little at his sudden start when he saw her there. “It’s only I,” she said, shedding back the curls from her pallid face and grasping the chair to steady herself and keep from falling. “I am not here to frighten or worry you. I’ve come to do you good,—to set you free. O Arthur, you do not know how terribly you have been wronged, and I did not know it either till a few days ago! She never received your letter,—Anna never did. If she had she would have answered yes and been in my place now; but she is going to be there. I give you up to Anna. I’m here to tell you so. But O Arthur, it hurts,—it hurts—” He knew it hurt by the agonized expression of her face, but he could not go near her for a moment, so great was his surprise at what he saw and heard. But when the first shock for them both was past, and he could listen to her more rational account of what she knew and what she was there to do, he refused to listen. He knew it all before, and he would not be free; he would keep his word, he said. Matters had gone too far to be so suddenly ended; he held her to her promise, and she must be his wife. “Can you tell me truly that you love _me_ more than Anna?” Lucy asked, a ray of hope dawning for an instant upon her heart, but fading into utter darkness as Arthur hesitated to answer her. He _did_ love Anna best, though never had Lucy been so near supplanting her as at that moment when she stood before him and told him he was free. There was something in the magnitude of her generosity which touched him closely, and made her dearer to him than she had ever been. “I can make you very happy,” he said at last, and Lucy replied, “Yes, but how with yourself? Would you be happy too? No, Arthur, you would not, and neither should I, knowing what I do. It is best that we should part, though it almost breaks my heart, for I have loved you so much.”