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 promised to be the rector's wife, hiding her face in his bosom, and telling him brokenly how unworthy she was, how foolish and how unsuited to the place, but promising to do the best she could do not to bring him into disgrace on account of her shortcomings.
"With the acknowledgment that you love me, I can do anything," she said, and her white hand crept slowly into the cold, clammy one which lay so listlessly in Arthur's lap.