ut this he could not do, and
so he had sent Lucy, who bent so tenderly above the sick girl,
whispering loving words in her ear, and dropping kisses upon the lips
which uttered no response, save once, when Lucy said:

"Do you remember Arthur?"

Then they murmured faintly:

"Yes; Arthur, I remember him, and the Christmas song, and the
gathering in the church; but that was long ago. There's much happened
since then."

"And I am to marry Arthur," Lucy had said again, but this time there
was no sign that she was understood, and that afternoon she went back
to Hanover loaded with testaments for the children of St. Mark's, and
new books for the Sunday-school, and, accompanied by Valencia, who,
having had a serious difference with her mistress, Mrs. Meredith,
offered her services to Lucy, and was at once accepted.

That was near the middle of October; now it was towards the last, and
Anna was so much better that she sat up for an hour or more, and
listened with some degree of interest to what Mrs. Meredith told her
of the days when she lay so unconscious of all that was passing around
her, never even heeding the kindly voice of Thornton Hastings, who,
more than once, had stood by her pillow with his hand on her feverish
brow, and whose thoughtfulness was visible in the choice bouquets he
sent each day, with notes of anxious inquiry when he did not come
himself.

Anna had not seen him yet since her convalescence. She would rather
not see any one until strong enough to talk, she said; and so Thornton
waited patiently for the interview she had promised him when she was
stronger, but every day he sent her fruit and flowers, and books of
prints which he thought would interest her, and which always made her
cheeks grow hot and her heart beat regretfully, for she thought of the
answer she must give him when he came, and she shrank from wounding
him.

"He is too good, too noble to have an unwilling wife," she said, but
that did not make it the less hard to tell him so, and when at last
she was well enough to see him, she waited his coming nervously,
starting when she heard his step, and trembling like a leaf as he drew
near her chair. It was a very thin, wasted hand which he took in his,
holding it for a moment between his own, and then laying it gently
back upon her lap.

He had come for the answer to a question put six weeks before, and
Anna gave it to him.

Kindly, considerately, but decidedly, she told him she could no