y right, and they did not annihilate
Mrs. Roe with a contemptuous frown as they had fully intended doing.
Mrs. Johnson and her daughter Alice had been present, they heard, the
latter actually joining in some of the plays, and the new clergyman, Mr.
Howard, had suffered himself to be caught by Miss Alice, who disfigured
her luxuriant curls with a bandage, and played at blindman's buff. This
proved conclusively to the elder ladies of Terrace Hill that ministers
were no better than other people, and they congratulated themselves
afresh upon their escape from having one of the brotherhood in thir
family.

In this escape Anna was particularly interested, as it had helped to
make her the delicate creature she was, for since the morning when she
had knelt at her proud father's feet, and begged him to revoke his cruel
decision, and say she might be the bride of a poor missionary, Anna had
greatly changed, and the father, ere he died, had questioned the
propriety of separating the hearts which clung so together. But the
young missionary had married another, and neither the parents nor the
sisters ever forgot the look of anguish which stole into Anna's face,
when she heard the fatal news. She had thought herself prepared, but the
news was just as crushing when it came, accompanied, though it was with
a few last lines from him. Anna kept this letter yet, wondering if the
missionary remembered her yet, and if they would ever meet again. This
was the secret of the missionary papers scattered so profusely through
the rooms at Terrace Hill. Anna was interested in everything pertaining
to the work, though, it must be confessed, that her mind wandered
oftenest to the banks of the Bosphorus, the City of Mosques and
Minarets, where he was laboring. Neither the mother, nor Asenath, nor
Eudora ever spoke to her of him, and so his name was never heard at
Terrace Hill, unless John mentioned it, as he sometimes did, drawing
comical pictures of what Anna would have been by this time had she
married the missionary.

Anna only laughed at her wild brother's comments, telling him once to
beware, lest he, too, follow her example, and was guilty of loving some
one far beneath him. John Richards had spurned the idea. The wife who
bore his name should be every way worthy of a Richards. This was John's
theory, nursed and encouraged by mother and sisters, the former charging
him to be sure and keep his heart from all save the right one. Had he
done so?