The Rector of St. Mark's

very highly the great lady who had so seldom honored them with her presence, and who always tried so hard to impress them with a sense of her superiority and the

aint when the breakfast table waited till eight, and sometimes nine o'clock, and the freshest eggs were taken from the nest, and the cream all skimmed from the pans to gratify the lady who came down very charming and pretty in her handsome cambric wrapper, wi

oo brilliant, but a few weeks of dissipation will cure that. Fine teeth, and features tolerably regular, except that the mouth is too wide, and the forehead too low, which defects she tak

cted a great fondness, because she thought it was romantic and girlish to do so, and she was far being past the period when women cease caring for youth and its appurtenances. She had criticised Anna's taste in dre

you to New York, under Madam Blank's supervision, and then we shal

f her plans for taking her first to New York, where she was to pass through a reformatory process with regard to d

ss as an heiress expectant, and with all these aids I confidently expect you to make a brill

d brilliancy, and the rich color mantling her cheek. "You surely

s. Meredith asked, looking qu

, much as I have anticipated it. I should despise

ed, feeling intuitively that she must change her tactics and keep her real

atience 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 bu

r 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

worthy of you?" Mrs. Meredith asked, just as a footstep was heard, and

ng the letter, and with it a book of p

or making a certain kind of cake of which Mrs. Meredith was very fond, and only Esther, the servant,

pleased to wait while I call them?" Esther said, i

impossible it would be to give the letter to Anna in the presence of her aunt,

here the tell-tale blushes which burned on Anna's cheek at sight of him more than compensated for the coolness with which Mrs. Meredith greeted h

ld after young ministers?" was her mental comment, as she bow

y years there came back to her an episode in her life, when, on just such a day as this, she had answered "no" to one as young and worthy as Arthur Leighton, while all the time the heart was clinging to him, she softened for a moment, and by the memory of the weary years passed with the rich old man whose name she bore, she was tempted to

walked back to the farmhouse, where the rector bad

n I was here last. You will find it in yo

l as to tell Esther to take it to her room struck her as rather odd, and as the practiced war-horse scents the battl

n room, and, pausing for a moment, she entered the chamber, took it in he

, 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.

ile a scowl of disapprobation ma

ay woo in vain. But it shall not be. It is my duty as the sister o

e matter, for, startled by a slight movement in the room directly opposite, the door of which was ajar, she thrust the letter into

the stolen missive in her pocket, she went down to the parlor and tried, by petting Anna more than her wont, to still the vo

e never suspected how near she had been to the great happiness she had sometimes dared to hope for, or dreamed how fervently Arthur Leighton