“And the clergyman on her brain? Does he appreciate his situation? I have an interest there. He is an old friend of mine,” Thornton Hastings asked.
He had been an amused listener to Fanny’s gay badinage, laughing merrily at the idea of Lucy’s taking an old woman out to air, and clothing her children in party dresses. His opinion of Lucy, as she had said, was that she was a pretty but frivolous plaything, and it showed upon his face as he asked the question he did, watching Anna furtively as Fanny replied:
“Oh yes, he is certainly smitten, and I must say I never saw Lucy so thoroughly in earnest. Why, she really seems to enjoy travelling all over Christendom to find the hovels and huts, though she is mortally afraid of the small-pox, and always carries with her a bit of chloride of lime as a disinfecting agent. I am sure she ought to win the parson. And so you know him, do you?”
“Yes; we were in college together, and I esteem him so highly that, had I a sister, there is no man living to whom I would so readily give her as to him.”
He was looking now at Anna, whose face was very pale, and who pressed a rose she held so tightly that the sharp thorns pierced her flesh, and a drop of blood stained the whiteness of her hand.
“See, you have hurt yourself,” Mr. Hastings said. “Come to the water-pitcher and wash the stain away.”
She went with him mechanically, and let him hold her hand in his while he wiped off the blood with his own handkerchief, treating her with a tenderness for which he could hardly account. He pitied her, and suspected she had repented of her rashness, and because he pitied her he asked her to ride with him that day after the fast bays, of which he had written to Arthur. Many admiring eyes were cast after them as they drove away, and Mrs. Hetherton whispered softly to Mrs. Meredith:
“A match in progress, I see. You have done well for your charming niece.”
And yet matrimony, as concerned himself, was very far from Thornton Hastings’ thoughts that afternoon, when, because he saw that it pleased Anna to have him do so, he talked to her of Arthur, hoping, in his unselfish heart, that what he said in his praise might influence her to reconsider her decision and give him a different answer. This was the second day of Thornton Hastings’ acquaintance with Anna Ruthven, but as time went on, bringing the usual routine of life at Newport, the drives, the rides, the pleasant piazza talks, and the quiet moonlight rambles, when Anna was always his companion, Thornton Hastings came to feel an unwillingness to surrender even to Arthur Leighton the beautiful girl who pleased him better than any one he had known.
Mrs. Meredith’s plans were working well, and so, though the autumn days had come, and one after another the devotees of fashion were dropping off, she lingered on, and Thornton Hastings still rode and walked with Anna Ruthven, until there came a night when they wandered farther than usual from the hotel, and sat down together on a height of land which overlooked the placid waters, where the moonlight lay softly sleeping. It was a most lovely night, and for awhile they listened in silence to the music of the sea, and then talked of the breaking-up which would come in a few days, when the hotel was to be closed, and wondered if next year they would come again to the old haunts and find them unchanged.