The imaginative rector could almost see those eyes, and feel the touch
of her hand as he took the other note--the one which Mrs. Meredith had
shut herself in her bedroom to write, and sent slyly by Valencia, who
was to tell no one where she had been.
A gleam of intelligence shot from Valencia's eyes as she took the note
and carried it safely to the parsonage, never yielding to the
temptation to read it, just as she had read the one abstracted from
the book, returning it when read to her mistress's pocket, where she
had found it while the family were at church.
Mrs. Meredith's note was as follows:
"MY DEAR MR. LEIGHTON: It is my niece's wish that I answer the
letter you were so kind as to inclose in the book left for her
last Saturday. She desires me to say that, though she has a very
great regard for you as her clergyman and friend, she cannot be
your wife, and she regrets exceedingly if she has in any way led
you to construe the interest she has always manifested in you
into a deeper feeling.
"She begs me to say that it gives her great pain to refuse one so
noble and good as she knows you to be, and she only does it
because she cannot find in her heart the love without which no
marriage can be happy.
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