As if divining his thoughts Agnes said to him rather abruptly:
“Guy, Ellen Laurie writes me that they are all going to Saratoga for a time, and then to Newport, and she wishes I would join then. Do you think I can afford it?”
“Oh, yes, that’s splendid, and I’ll stay here while you are gone; I like Aikenside so much better than Boston. Mamma can afford it, can’t she, Guy?” Jessie exclaimed, dropping her flowers and springing upon her brother’s knee.
Smoothing her bright hair and pinching her soft cheek, Guy replied:
“That means, I suppose, that I can afford it, don’t it? but I, too, was thinking just now about your staying here, where you really do improve.”
Then turning to Agnes he made some inquiries as to the plans proposed by the Lauries, ascertaining that Agnes’s plan was that he should invite her to go with him to Saratoga, or Newport, or both, and that Jessie meantime should remain at Aikenside, just as she wished to do.
Guy could not find much pleasure in escorting Agnes to a fashionable watering-place, particularly as he was expected to pay the bills; but he sometimes did unselfish things, and as he had not been very gracious to her on the occasion of her last visit to Aikenside, he decided to martyr himself and go to Saratoga. But who would care for Jessie? She must not be left wholly with the servants. A governess of some kind must be provided, and he was about speaking of this to Agnes, when the doctor was announced, and the conversation turned into another channel. Agnes Remington would not have confessed how much she was interested in Dr. Holbrook. Indeed, only that morning, in reply to a joking remark made to her by Guy, she had petulantly exclaimed:
“The idea of my caring for him, except as a friend and physician. Why, he must be younger than I am, or at most about my age. A mere boy, as it were.”
And yet, in making her toilet that afternoon, she had arranged every part of her dress with direct reference to the “mere boy,” her heart beating faster every time she remembered the white sun-bonnet and the Scotch plaid shawl she had seen beside him when driving that morning. Little Maddy Clyde would hardly have credited the story had she been told that the beautiful lady from Aikenside was positively jealous of Dr. Holbrook’s attentions to herself; yet it was so, and the jealousy was all the more bitter when she remembered who Madeline was, and how startled that aged couple of the red cottage would be, could they know who she was. But they did not; she was quite sure of that; and so she had ventured to pass their door, her heart throbbing with a strange sensation as the old way-marks came in view, way-marks which she remembered so well, and around which so many sad memories were clustering. Agnes was not all bad. Indeed, she was scarcely worse than most vain, selfish fashionable women; and all that day, since her return from riding, haunting, remorseful thoughts of the long ago had been clinging to her, making her more anxious to leave that neighborhood for a time at least, and in scenes of gayety forget, if possible, that such things as broken vows or broken hearts existed.
The arrival of the doctor dissipated her sadness in a measure, and after greeting him with her usual expressions of welcome, she said, half playfully, half spitefully: “By the way, doctor, who was that old lady, all bent up double in shawls and things, whom you were taking out for an airing?”