“No, nothing; I was going to say that I’d rather stay a little longer where there are signs and sounds of life. I should die to be alone at Honedale to-morrow. I may die here, I don’t know. Do you know that to-morrow will be the bridal?”
Yes, Mrs. Noah knew it; but she hoped it might have escaped Maddy’s mind.
“Poor child,” she said again, “poor child, I mistrust you did wrong to tell him no!”
“Oh, Mrs. Noah, don’t tell me that; don’t make it harder for me to bear. The tempter has been telling me so, all day, and my heart is so hard and wicked, I cannot pray as I would. Oh, you don’t know how wretched I am!” and Maddy hid her face in the broad, motherly lap, sobbing so wildly that Mrs. Noah was greatly perplexed, how to act, or what to say.
Years ago, she would have spurned the thought that the grandchild of the old man who had bowed to his own picture should be mistress of Aikenside; but she had changed since then, and could she have had her way, she would have stopped the marriage, and, bringing her boy home, have given him to the young girl weeping so convulsively in her lap. But Mrs. Noah could not have her way. The bridal guests were, even then, assembling in that home beyond the sea. She could not call Guy back, and so she pitied and caressed the wretched Maddy, saying to her at last:
“I’ll tell you what is impressed on my mind; this Lucy’s got the consumption, without any kind of doubt, and if you’ve no objections to a widower, you may——”
She did not finish the sentence, for Maddy started in horror. To her there was something murderous in the very idea, and she thrust it quickly aside. Guy Remington was not for her, she said, and her wish was to forget him. If she could get through the dreaded to-morrow, she should do better. There had been a load upon her the whole day, a nightmare she could not shake off, and she had come to Lucy’s room, in the hope of leaving her burden there, of praying her pain away. Would Mrs. Noah leave her a while, and see that no one came?
The good woman could not refuse, and going out, she left Maddy by the window, watching the sun as it went down, and then watching; the wintry twilight deepen over the landscape, until all things were blended together in one great darkness, and Jessie, seeking for her found her at last, fainting upon the floor.
Maddy was glad of the racking headache, which kept her in her bed the whole of the next day, glad of any excuse to stay away from the family, talking—all but Mrs. Noah—of Guy, and what was transpiring in England. They had failed to remember the difference in the longitude of the two places; but Maddy forgot nothing, and when the clock struck four, she called Mrs. Noah to her and whispered, faintly:
“They were to be married at eight in the evening. Allowing for possible delays, it’s over before this and Guy is lost forever!”