"He knew her first," she said, "and if he has since been pleased with me, the sight of her has won him back to his allegiance, and it is right. She is a pretty creature, but strangely unsuited, I fear, to be his wife," and then, as she remembered Lucy's wish to go with her when next she visited the poor, she said:
"I will take her to see the Widow Hobbs. That will give her some idea of the duties which will devolve upon her as a rector's wife. I can go directly there from Prospect Hill, where, I suppose, I must call with Aunt Meredith."
Anna made herself believe that in doing this she was acting only from a magnanimous desire to fit Lucy for her work, if, indeed, she was to be Arthur's wife—that in taking the mantle from her own shoulders, and wrapping it around her rival, she was doing a most amiable deed, when down in her inmost heart, where the tempter had put it, there was an unrecognized wish to see how the little dainty girl would shrink from the miserable abode, and recoil from the touch of the little, dirty hands which were sure to be laid upon her dress if the children were at home, and she waited a little impatiently to start on her errand of mercy.
It was four o'clock when, with her aunt, she arrived at Colonel Hetherton's and found the family assembled upon the broad piazza, the doctor dutifully holding the skein of worsted from which Miss Fanny was crocheting, and Lucy playing with a kitten, whose movements were scarcely more graceful than her own, as she sprang up and ran to welcome Anna.
"Oh, yes, I am delighted to go with you. Pray let us start at once," she exclaimed, when, after a few moments of conversation, Anna told where she was going.
Lucy was very gayly dressed, enough so for a party, Anna thought, smiling to herself as she imagined the startling effect the white muslin and bright plaid ribbons would have upon the inmates of the shanty where they were going. There was a remonstrance from Mrs. Hetherton against her niece's walking so far, and Mrs. Meredith suggested that they should ride, but to this Lucy objected. She meant to take Anna's place among the poor when she was gone, she said, and how was she ever to do it if she could not walk such a little way as that? Anna, too, was averse to riding and she felt a kind of grim satisfaction when, after a time, the little figure, which at first had skipped along ahead with all the airiness of a bird, began to lag, and even pant for breath, as the way grew steeper and the path more stony and rough. Anna's evil spirit was in the ascendant that afternoon, steeling her heart against Lucy's doleful exclamations, as one after another her delicate slippers were torn, and the sharp thistles, of which the path was full, penetrated to her soft flesh. Straight and unbending as a young Indian, Anna walked on, shutting her ears against the sighs of weariness which reached them from time to time. But when there came a half sobbing cry of actual pain, she stopped suddenly and turned towards Lucy, whose breath came gaspingly, and whose cheeks were almost purple with the exertion she had made.
"I cannot go any farther until I rest," she said, sinking down, exhausted, upon a large flat rock beneath a walnut tree.
Touched with pity at the sight of the heated face, from which the sweat was dripping, Anna too sat down beside her, and, laying her curly head in her lap, smoothed the golden hair, hating herself cordially, as Lucy said:
"You've walked so fast I could not keep up. You do not know, perhaps, how weak I am, and how little it takes to tire me. They say my heart is diseased, and an unusual excitement might kill me."
"No, oh, no!" Anna answered with a shudder, as she thought of what might have been the result of her rashness, and then she smoothed the wet hair, which, dried by the warm sunbeams, coiled itself up in golden masses, which her fingers softly threaded.