ed, take care of that just as he took care of her,
inclining the Hetherton family to be so kind and tender towards her,
and keeping Arthur from the house during the time when the Christmas
decorations were completed and the Christmas festival was held.

Many were the inquiries made for her, and many the thanks and wishes
for her speedy restoration sent her by those whom she had so
bountifully remembered.

Thornton Hastings, too, who had come to town and was present at the
church on Christmas-eve, asked for her with almost as much interest as
Arthur, although the latter had hoped she was not seriously ill and
expressed a regret that she was not there, saying he should call on
her on the morrow after the morning service.

"Oh, I cannot see him here. I must tell him there, at the rectory, in
the very room where he asked Anna and me both to be his wife," Lucy
said when Fanny reported Arthur's message. "I am able to go there and
I must. It will be fine sleighing to-morrow. See, the snow is falling
now," and pushing back the curtain, Lucy looked dreamily out upon the
fast whitening ground, sighing, as she remembered the night when the
first snowflakes fell and she stood watching them with Arthur at her
side.

Fanny did not oppose her cousin, and, with a kiss upon the
blue-veined forehead, she went to her own room, leaving Lucy to think
over for the hundredth time what she would say to Arthur.

CHAPTER XIII.

CHRISTMAS DAY.

The worshippers at St. Mark's on Christmas morning heard the music of
the bells as the Hetherton sleigh passed by, but none of them knew
whither it was bound, or the scene which awaited the rector, when, his
services over, he started towards home.

Lucy had kept her word, and, just as Mrs. Brown was looking at the
clock to see if it was time to put her fowls to bake, she heard the
hall-door open softly and almost dropped her dripping-pan in her
surprise at the sight of Lucy Harcourt, with her white face and great
sunken blue eyes, which looked so mournfully at her as Lucy said:

"I want to go to Arthur's room--the library, I mean."

"Why, child, what is the matter? I heard you was sick, but did not
s'pose 'twas anything like this. 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, she said. She would rather go at once to
Arthur's room. Mrs. Brown made no objection, though she wondered if
t