er
sight, still preferred the olden time, when she had him all to herself
and was not disquieted with the fear that she did not know enough for
him, as she often was when she heard him talking with Fanny and her
uncle of things she did not understand.

This evening, however, the family were away and she received him
alone, trying so hard to come up to his capacity, talking so
intelligibly of books she had been reading and looking so lovely in
her winter crimson dress, besides being so sweetly affectionate and
confiding, that for once since his engagement Arthur was more than
content, and returned her modest caresses with a warmth he had not
felt before. He did love her, he said to himself, or, at least, he was
learning to love her very much; and when at last he took his leave,
and she went with him to the door, there was an unwonted tenderness in
his manner as he pushed her gently back, for the first snow of the
season was falling and the large flakes dropped upon her golden hair,
from which he brushed them carefully away.

"I cannot let my darling take cold," he said, and Lucy felt a strange
thrill of joy, for never before had he called her his darling, and
sometimes she had thought that the love she received was not as great
as the love she gave.

But she did not think so now, and in an ecstasy of joy she stood in
the deep recess of the bay window, watching him as he went away
through the moonlight and the feathery cloud of snow, wondering why,
when she was so happy, there could cling to her a haunted presentiment
that she and Arthur would never meet again just as they had parted.

Arthur, on the contrary, was troubled with no such presentiment. Of
Anna he hardly thought, or, if he did, the vision was obscured by the
fair picture he had seen standing in the door, with the snowflakes
resting in her hair like pearls in a golden coronet. And Arthur
thanked his God that he was beginning at last to feel right--that the
solemn vows that he was so soon to utter would be more than a mockery.

It was Arthur's work to teach others how dark and mysterious are the
ways of Providence, but he had not himself half learned that lesson in
all its strange reality; but the lesson was coming on apace; each
stride of his swift-footed beast brought him nearer to the great shock
waiting for him upon the study table, where Thomas, his man, had put
it.

He saw it the first thing on entering the room, but he did not take
it up until th