strange faces about her, hopelessly. Perhaps it was not too
late---perhaps some kind motherly woman would tell her if she were
doing right. But they all looked so strange and forbidding, and while
she turned the question over and over in her mind, the car stopped, the
brakeman called the station and Lennox Sanderson got on.

She turned to him in her utter perplexity, forgetting he was the cause
of it.

"My darling, how pale you are. Are you ill?"

"Not ill, but----" He would not let her finish, but reassured her by
the tenderest of looks, the warmest of hand clasps, and the terrified
girl began to lose the hunted feeling that she had.

They rode on for fully an hour. Sanderson was perfectly
self-possessed. He might have been married every day in the year, for
any difference it made in his demeanor. He was perfectly composed,
laughed and chatted as wittily as ever. In time, Anna partook of his
mood and laughed back. She felt as if a weight had been lifted off her
mind. At last they stopped at a little station called Whiteford. An
old-fashioned carriage was waiting for them; they entered it and the
driver, whipped up his horses. A drive of a half mile brought them to
an ideal white cottage surrounded by porches and hidden in a tangle of
vines. The door was opened for them by the Rev. John Langdon in person.
He seemed a preternaturally grave young man to Anna and his clerical
attire was above reproach. Any misgivings one might have had regarding
him on the score of his youth, were more than counterbalanced by his
almost supernatural gravity.