ok which she could not mistake. But when she
remembered that Arthur was only a poor clergyman, and thought of that
house on Madison Square which Thornton Hastings owned, the softened
mood was changed, and Arthur Leighton's chance with her was gone.

Awhile they talked together in the Glen, and then walked back to the
farmhouse, where the rector bade them good evening, after casually
saying to Anna:

"I have brought the book you spoke of when I was here last. You will
find it in your room, where I asked Esther to take it."

That Mr. Leighton should bring her niece a book did not seem strange
at all, but that he should be so very thoughtful as to tell Esther to
take it to her room struck her as rather odd, and as the practiced
war-horse scents the battle from afar, so Mrs. Meredith at once
suspected something wrong, and felt a curiosity to know what the book
could be.

It was lying on Anna's table as she reached the door on her way to her
own room, and, pausing for a moment, she entered the chamber, took it
in her hands, read the title page, and then opened it to where the
letter lay.

"Miss Anna Ruthven," she said. "He writes a fair hand;" and then, as
the thought, which at first was scarce a thought, kept growing in her
mind, she turned it over, and found that, owing to some defect, it had
become unsealed and the lid of the envelope lay temptingly open before
her. "I would never break a seal," she said, "but surely, as her
protector and almost mother, I may read what this minister has written
to my niece."

She read what he had written, while a scowl of disapprobation marred
the smoothness of her brow.

"It is as I feared. Once let her see this, and Thornton Hastings may
woo in vain. But it shall not be. It is my duty as the sister of her
dead father, to interfere and not let her throw herself away."

Perhaps Mrs. Meredith really felt that she was doing her duty. At all
events, she did not give herself much time to reason upon the matter,
for, startled by a slight movement in the room directly opposite, the
door of which was ajar, she thrust the letter into her pocket and
turned to see--Valencia, standing with her back to her, and arranging
her hair in a mirror which hung upon the wall.

"She could not have seen me; and, even if she did, she would not
suspect the truth," was the guilty woman's thought, as, with the
stolen missive in her pocket, she went down to the parlor and tried,
by petting Anna more than