onish the humble Hanoverians."

This was up in Anna's room, and when the Glen was reached Mrs.
Meredith continued the conversation, telling Anna of her plans for
taking her first to New York, where she was to pass through a
reformatory process with regard to dress. Then they were going to
Saratoga, where she expected her niece to reign supreme; both as a
beauty and a belle.

"Whatever I have left at my death I shall leave to you," she said;
"consequently you will pass as an heiress expectant, and with all
these aids I confidently expect you to make a brilliant match before
the winter season closes, if, indeed, you do not before you leave
Saratoga."

"Oh, aunt," Anna exclaimed, her brown eyes flashing with unwonted
brilliancy, and the rich color mantling her cheek. "You surely are not
taking me to Saratoga on such a shameful errand as that?"

"Shameful errand as what?" Mrs. Meredith asked, looking quickly up,
while Anna replied:

"Trying to find a husband. I cannot go if you are, much as I have
anticipated it. I should despise and hate myself forever. No, aunt, I
cannot go."

"Nonsense, child. You don't know what you are saying," Mrs. Meredith
retorted, feeling intuitively that she must change her tactics and
keep her real intentions concealed if she would lead her niece into
the snare laid for her.

Cunningly and carefully for the next half hour she talked, telling
Anna that she was not to be thrust upon the notice of any one--that
she herself had no patience with those intriguing mammas who push
their bold daughters forward, but that as a good marriage was the
_ultima thule_ of a woman's hopes, it was but natural that she, as
Anna's aunt, should wish to see her well settled in life, and settled,
too, near herself, where they could see each other every day.

"Of course, there is no one in Hanover whom you, as a Ruthven, would
stoop to marry," she said, fixing her eyes inquiringly upon Anna, who
was pulling to pieces the wild flowers she had gathered, and thinking
of that twilight hour when she had talked with their young clergyman
as she never talked before. Of the many times, too, when they had met
in the cottages of the poor, and he had walked slowly home with her,
lingering by the gate, as if loth to say good-by, she thought, and the
life she had lived since he first came to Hanover, and she learned to
blush when she met the glance of his eye, looked fairer far than the
life her aunt, had marked out as the