Thornton Hastings, and mistress of the house on Madison
Square. With a bitter groan at the enormity of his sin, and a fervent
prayer for forgiveness, the rector had torn the slips of paper in
shreds and given himself so completely to his work that his sermon was
done a full hour earlier than usual, and he was free to indulge in
reveries of Anna for as long a time as he pleased.
"I wonder if Mrs. Meredith has come," he thought, as, with his feet
upon the window-sill, he sat looking across the meadow-land to where
the chimneys and gable roof of Captain Humphreys' house was visible,
for Captain Humphreys was Anna Ruthven's grandfather, and it was there
she had lived since she was three years old.
As if thoughts of Mrs. Meredith reminded him of something else, the
rector took from the drawer of his writing table a letter received the
previous day, and, opening to the second page, read again as follows:
"Are you going anywhere this summer? Of course not, for so long
as there is an unbaptized child, or a bed-ridden old woman in the
parish, you must stay at home, even if you do grow as rusty as
did Professor Cobden's coat before we boys made him a present of
a new one.
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