Agnes was changed somewhat of late. She had grown more thoughtful and quiet, while her manner toward Maddy was not as haughty as formerly. Guy thought her improved, and thus was not so delighted as he would otherwise have been, when, one day, about two weeks after Uncle Joseph’s arrival at Honedale, she startled him by saying she thought it nearly time for her to return to Boston, if she meant to spend the winter there, and asked what she should do with Jessie.
Guy was not quite willing for Agnes to leave him there alone, but when he saw that she was determined, he consented to her going, with the understanding that Jessie was to remain—a plan which Agnes did not oppose, as a child so large as Jessie might stand in the way of her being as gay as she meant to be in Boston. Jessie, too, when consulted, said she would far rather stay at Aikenside; and so one November morning, Agnes, wrapped in velvet and furs, kissed her little daughter, and bidding good-by to Maddy and the servants, left a neighborhood which, since Uncle Joseph was so near, had become so intolerable that not even the hope of winning the doctor could avail to keep her in it.
Guy accompanied her to the city, wondering why, when he used to like it so much, it now seemed dull and tiresome, or why the society he had formerly enjoyed failed to bring back the olden pleasure he had experienced when a resident of Boston. Guy was very popular there, and much esteemed by his friends of both sexes, and great were the efforts made to entertain and keep him as long as possible. But Guy could not be prevailed upon to stay there long, and after seeing Agnes settled in one of the most fashionable boarding houses, he started for Aikenside.
It was dark when he reached home, and as the evening had closed in with a heavy rain, the house presented rather a cheerless appearance, particularly as, in consequence of Mrs. Noah’s not expecting him that day, no fires had been kindled in the parlors, or in any room except the library. There a bright coal fire was blazing in the grate, and thither Guy repaired, finding, as he had expected, Jessie and her teacher. Not liking to intrude on Mr. Guy, of whom she still stood somewhat in awe, Maddy soon arose to leave, but Guy bade her stay; he should be lonely without her, he said, and so bringing her work she sat down to sew, while Jessie looked over a book of prints, and Guy upon the lounge studied the face which, it seemed to him, grew each day more and more beautiful. Then he talked with her of books, and the lessons which were to be resumed on the morrow, watching Maddy as her bright face sparkled and glowed with excitement. Then he questioned her of her father’s family, feeling a strange sense of satisfaction in knowing that the Clydes were not a race of whose blood any one need be ashamed; and Maddy was more like them he was sure than like the Markhams, and Guy shivered a little as he recalled the peculiar dialect of Mr. and Mrs. Markham, and remembered that they were Maddy’s grandparents. Not that it was anything to him. Oh, no, only as an inmate of his family he felt interested in her, more so perhaps than young men were apt to be interested in their sister’s governess.
Had Guy then been asked the question, he would, in all probability, have acknowledged that in his heart there was a feeling of superiority to Maddy Clyde; that she was not quite the equal of Aikenside’s heir, nor yet of Lucy Atherstone. It was natural; he had been educated to feel the difference, but any haughty arrogance of which he might have been guilty was kept down by his extreme good sense and generous, impulsive nature. He liked Maddy; he liked to look at her as, in the becoming crimson merino which he really and Jessie nominally had given her, she sat before him, with the firelight falling on her beautiful hair, and making shadows on her sunny face.
Guy was luxurious in his tastes, and it seemed to him that Maddy was just the picture to set off that room, or in fact all the rooms at Aikenside. She would disgrace none of them, and he found himself wishing that Providence had made her something to him—sister or cousin, or anything that would make her one of the Remington line.
And now, my reader, do not fall to abusing Guy, or accuse him of forgetting Lucy Atherstone, for he did not. He thought of her many times that evening, and in his dreams that night Lucy and Maddy shared pretty equally, but the latter was associated with the lessons of the morrow, while Lucy was the bright daystar for which he lived and hoped.
It did not take long for the people of Sommerville to hear that Guy Remington had actually turned schoolmaster, having in his library for two hours or more each day Jessie’s little girl-governess, about whose brilliant beauty there was so much said—people wondering, as people will, where it would end, and if it could be possible that the haughty Guy had forgotten his English Lucy and gone to educating a wife.
The doctor, to whom these remarks were sometimes made, silently gnashed his teeth, then said savagely that “if Guy chose to teach Maddy Clyde, he did not see whose business it was,” and then rode over to Aikenside to see the teacher and pupil, half hoping that Guy would soom tire of his project and give it up. But Guy grew more and more pleased with his employment, until, at last, from giving Maddy two hours of his time, he came to give her four, esteeming them the pleasantest of the whole twenty-four. Guy was proud of Maddy’s improvement, praising her often to the doctor, who also marveled at the rapid development of her mind and the progress she made, grasping a knotty point almost before it was explained, and retaining with wonderful tenacity what she learned.
It mattered nothing to Guy that neighbors gossiped there were none familiar enough to tell him what was said, except the doctor or Mrs. Noah; and so he heard few of the remarks made so frequently, As in Honedale, so in Sommerville Maddy was a favorite, and those who interested themselves most in the matter never said anything worse of her and Mr. Guy than that he might perhaps be educating his own wife, and insinuating that it would be a great “come up” for Grandfather Markham’s child. But Maddy never dreamed of such a thing, and kept on her pleasant way, reciting every day to Guy and going every Wednesday to the red cottage, whither, after the first visit to Uncle Joseph, Guy never accompanied her. Jessie, on the contrary, went often to Honedale, where one at least always greeted her coming, stealing up closely to her, and whispering softly: “My Daisy is come again.”