“Miss Anna is elderly, I presume?”
“No, scarcely eighteen, is amiable and attractive, finely educated, a musician and artist; an orphan without a relative in the world, so far as is known.”
“But she does not live alone in that great mansion?”
“Yes, with the exception of a middle-aged woman—Miss Jerusha Flint—who lived with her brother, Horace, and his family in the brown cottage we passed this morning, about a mile beyond the other end of the village, and who was more than gratified when Miss Anna invited her to make her home at ‘My Lady’s Manor.’”
“They must live a lonely life there.”
“Not at all. Miss Anna is much beloved, and has many visitors, not only from the neighborhood, but from Baltimore. Moreover, the servants, who have known and loved her from babyhood, have their comfortable quarters back of the mansion, and as Miss Anna’s library and sleeping-room windows look directly down upon the doors of their cabins, Lois, Phebe and Judy are at all hours of the day and night within call.”
“It is not likely that Miss Anna, being young and attractive, will remain long unmarried.”
“If the opinion of the neighborhood be correct, she will in the near future bestow her hand and heart upon Mr. Valentine Courtney—the brother-in-law of our good pastor Rev. Carl Courtney, of ‘Friedenheim,’ the old homestead of the Courtneys. He is a lawyer, has his office in Baltimore, but makes his home at ‘Friedenheim.’ He is one of the most useful and liberal members of his brother-in-law’s church, and is in every respect an estimable young man.”
“You say ‘brother-in-law’—and yet the Rev. Carl is a Courtney.”
“Yes, he is a distant relative of his wife, and of her brother, Valentine, and his home from childhood has been at ‘Friedenheim,’ which was inherited by Mrs. Courtney.”