he view Captain Humphreys took of the matter
when he was speaking to me about it."

There were red spots on Lucy's face, but her lips were very white, and
the buttons on her riding dress rose and fell rapidly with the beating
of her heart as she looked steadily at Arthur. Was he going to send
her from him, send her back to the insipid life she had lived before
she knew him? It was too terrible to believe, and the great tears
rolled slowly down her cheeks. Then, as a flash of pride came to her
aid, she dashed them away, and said haughtily:

"And so, for fear I shall fall in love with you, and be ruined,
perhaps, you are sacrificing both comfort and freedom, shutting
yourself up here among your books and studies to the neglect of other
duties? But it need be so no longer. The necessity for it, if it
existed once, certainly does not now. I will not be in your way.
Forgive me that I ever have been."

Lucy's voice began to tremble as she gathered up her riding-habit and
turned to find her gauntlets. One of them had dropped upon the floor,
between the table and the rector, and as she stooped to reach it her
curls almost swept the young man's lap.

"Let me get it for you," he said, hastily pushing back his chair, and
awkwardly entangling his foot in her dress, so that when she rose she
stumbled backward, and would have fallen but for the arm he quickly
passed around her.

Something in the touch of that quivering form completed the work of
temptation, and he held it for an instant while she said to him:

"Please, let me go, sir!"

"No, Lucy, I can't let you go; I want you to stay with me."

Instantly the drooping head was uplifted, and Lucy's eyes looked into
his with such a wistful, pleading, wondering look, that Arthur saw, or
thought he saw, his duty plain, and, gently touching his lips to the
brow glistening so white within their reach, he continued:

"There is a way to stop the gossip and make it right for me to see
you. Promise to be my wife, and not even Captain Humphreys will say
aught against it."

Arthur's voice trembled a little now, for the mention of Captain
Humphreys had brought a thought of Anna, whose brown eyes seemed for
an instant to look reproachfully upon that wooing. But Arthur had gone
too far to retract--he had committed himself, and now he had only to
wait for Lucy's answer.

There was no deception about her. Hers was a nature as clear as
crystal, and, with a gush of glad tears, she promis