“No, Maddy, you are not;” and Guy interrupted her.
Gently lifting up her head, he smoothed back her hair; and keeping a hand on each side of her face, said, pleasantly:
“You are not homely. I think you quite as pretty as Lucy; I do, really,” he continued, as her eyes kindled at the compliment. “I am going to write to her to-night, and shall tell her more about you. I want you to like each other very much when she comes, so that you may live with us. Aikenside would not be Aikenside without you, Maddy.”
In all his wooings of Lucy Atherstone, Guy’s voice had never been tenderer in its tone than when he said this to Maddy, whose lip quivered again, and who involuntarily laid her head upon the arm of his chair as she cried a second time, not noisily, but quietly, softly, as if this crying did her good. For several minutes they sat there thus, the nature of their thoughts known only to each other, for neither spoke, until Maddy, half ashamed of her emotions, lifted up her head, and said:
“I do not know what made me cry, only I have been so happy here that I guess I thought it might go on forever. I am afraid Miss Atherstone will not fancy me, and I know I shall not feel as free here, after she comes, as I do now. Then your being so good in sending me to school, helped me to cry more, and so I was very foolish. Don’t tell Miss Atherstone that I cried. Tell her, though, how beautiful she is, and how glad I am that she loves you, and is going to be your wife.” Maddy’s voice was very steady in its tone. She evidently meant what she said, and it made Guy rather uncomfortable, and as Maddy was in some way associated with his discomfort, he did not oppose her when she arose to leave him.
Had Maddy been more a woman, and less a child, he would have seen that it was well for her to know of Lucy Atherstone before her feelings for Guy Remington had assumed a definite form. As it was, she never dreamed how near she was to loving Aikenside’s young master; and while talking with Jessie of the grand times they should have at school, she marveled at that little spot of pain which was burning at her heart, or why she should wish that Guy would not speak of her in his letter to Lucy Atherstone.
But Guy did speak of her, frankly confessing the interest he felt in her, telling just how people were beginning to talk, and asking Lucy if she cared, declaring that, if she did, he would not see Maddy Clyde any more than was necessary. In a little less than four weeks there came an answer from Lucy, who, with health somewhat improved, had returned to England, and wrote to Guy from Switzerland, where she expected to spend the summer, half hoping Guy might join her there, though she could not urge it, as her mother still insisted that she was not able to take upon herself the duties of a wife. Then she spoke of Maddy Clyde, saying “She was not at all jealous of her dear Guy. Of course ignorant, meddling people, of whom she feared there were a great many in America, would gossip, but he was not to mind them.” Then she said that if Maddy were willing, she would so much like her picture, as she had a curiosity to know just how she looked, and if Maddy pleased, “would she write a few lines, so as not to seem so much a stranger?”
“Darling little Lucy, I do love her very dearly,” was Guy’s comment, as he finished reading her letter, feeling for the moment as if her mother were a kind of cruel ogress, bent on preventing him from being happy. Then, as he remembered Lucy’s hope that he might join her, and thought how many times he had crossed the sea to no purpose, he said, half petulantly:
“I’ve been to England for nothing times enough. When that mother of hers says I may have her daughter, I’ll go again, but not before. It don’t pay.”
And crushing the letter into his pocket, he went out upon the piazza, where were assembled Maddy, Jessie, and Mrs. Agnes, the latter of whom had come to Aikenside the day before.