The Rector of St. Marks | Page 2

denial of self you look for
your reward in heaven, and I suppose you are right; but as I have no
reason to think I have any stock in that region, I go in for a good time
here, and this summer I take it at Saratoga, where I expect to meet one
of your lambs. I hear you have in your flock forty in all, their ages
varying from fifteen to fifty. But this particular lamb, Miss Anna
Ruthven, is, I fancy, the fairest of them all, and as I used to make you
my father confessor in the days when I was rusticated out in Winsted,
and fell so desperately in love with the six Miss Larkins, each old
enough to be my mother, so now I confide to you the programme as
marked out by Mrs. Julia Meredith, the general who brings the lovely
Anna into the field.
"We, that is, Mrs. Meredith and myself, are on the best of terms. I
lunch with her, dine with her, lounge in her parlors, drive her to the
park, take her to the operas, concerts and plays, and compliment her
good looks, which are wonderfully well preserved for a woman of
forty-five. I am twenty-six, you know, and so no one ever associates us
together in any kind of gossip. She is the very quintessence of fashion,
and I am one of the danglers whose own light is made brighter by the
reflection of her rays. Do you see the point? Well, then, in return for
my attentions, she takes a very sisterly interest in my future wife, and
has adroitly managed to let me know of her niece, a certain Anna
Ruthven, who, inasmuch as I am tired of city belles, will undoubtedly
suit my fancy, said Anna being very fresh, very artless, and very
beautiful withal. She is also niece to Mrs. Meredith, whose only brother
married very far beneath him, when he took to wife the daughter of a
certain old-fashioned Captain Humphreys, a pillar, no doubt, in your
church. This young Ruthven was drowned, or hung, or something, and
the sister considers it as another proof of his wife's lack of refinement
and discretion that at her death, which happened when Anna was three
years old, she left her child to the charge of her own parents, Captain

Humphreys and spouse, rather than to Mrs. Meredith's care, and that,
too, in the very face of the lady's having stood as sponsor for the infant,
an act which you will acknowledge was very unnatural and ungrateful
in Mrs. Ruthven, to say the least of it.
"You see I am telling you all this, just as if you did not know Miss
Anna's antecedents even better than myself, but possibly you do not
know that, having arrived at a suitable age, she is this summer to be
introduced into society at Saratoga, while I am expected to fall in love
with her at once and make her Mrs. Hastings before another winter.
Now, in your straightforward way of putting things, don't imagine that
Mrs. Meredith has deliberately told me all this, for she has not, but I
understand her perfectly, and know exactly what she expects me to do.
Whether I do or not depends partly upon how I like Miss Anna, partly
upon how she likes me, and partly upon yourself.
"Now, Arthur, you know, I was always famous for presentiments or
fancies, as you termed them, and the latest of these is that you like
Anna Ruthven. Do you? Tell me, honor bright, and by the memory of
the many scrapes you got me out of, and the many more you kept me
from getting into, I will treat Miss Anna as gingerly and brotherly as if
she was already your wife. I like her picture, which I have seen, and
believe I shall like the girl, but if you say that by looking at her with
longing eyes I shall be guilty of breaking some one of the ten
commandments--I don't know which--why, then, hands off at once.
That's fair, and will prove to you that, although not a parson like
yourself, there is still a spark of honor, if not of goodness, in the breast
of
"Yours truly, "THORNTON HASTINGS.
"If you were here this afternoon, I'd take you to drive after a pair of
bays which are to sweep the stakes at Saratoga this summer, and I'd
treat you to a finer cigar than often finds its way to Hanover. Shall I
send you out a box, or would your people pull down the church about
the ears of a minister wicked enough to smoke? Again adieu.
"T. H."

There was a half-amused smile on the face of the rector as he finished
the