She was very glad to see him. The cottage with its humble adornings
did seem lonely, almost dreary, after the life and bustle of New York,
and Maddy had cried more than once to think how hard and wicked she
must be growing when her home had ceased to be the dear old home she
once loved so well. She had been there five days now, and
notwithstanding the efforts of her grandparents to entertain her, each
day had seemed a week in its duration. Neither the doctor nor Guy had
been near her, and capricious little Maddy had made herself believe
that the former was sadly remiss in his duty, inasmuch as he had not
seen her for so long. He had been in the habit of calling every week,
her grandmother said, and this did not tend to increase her
amiability. Why didn't he come now when he knew she was at home?
Didn't he want to see her? Well, she could be indifferent, too, and
when they did meet, she'd show how little she cared!
Maddy was getting to be a woman with womanly freaks, as the reader
will readily see. At Guy she was not particularly piqued. She did not
take his attentions, as a matter of course; still she thought more of
him, if possible, than of the doctor, during those five days, saying
to herself each morning: "He'll surely come to-day," and to herself
each night: "He will be here to-morrow." She had something to show him
at last--a letter from Lucy Atherstone, who had gradually come to be
her regular correspondent, and whom Maddy had learned to love with all
the intensity of her girlhood. To her ardent imagination Lucy
Atherstone was but a little lower than the angels, and the pure, sweet
thoughts contained in every letter were doing almost as much toward
molding her character as Grandpa Markham's prayers and constant
teachings. Maddy did not know it, but it was these letters from Lucy
which kept her from loving Guy Remington. She could not for a moment
associate him with herself when she so constantly thought of him as
the husband of another, and that other Lucy Atherstone. Not for worlds
would Maddy have wronged the gentle creature who wrote to her so
confidingly of Guy, envying her in that she could so often see his
face and hear his voice, while his betrothed was separated from him by
many thousand miles. Little by little it had come out that Lucy's
mother was averse to the match, that she had in her mind the case of
an English lord, who would make her daughter "My Lady;" and this was
the secret of her deferring so long her daughter's marriage. In her
last letter to Maddy, however, Lucy had written with more than her
usual spirit that she would come in possession of her property on her
twenty-fifth birthday. She should then feel at liberty to act for
herself, and she launched out into joyful anticipations of the time
when she should come to Aikenside and meet her dear Maddy Clyde.
Feeling that Guy, if he did not already know it, would be glad to hear
it, Maddy had all the morning been wishing he would come; and when she
saw him at the gate she ran out to meet him, her eyes and face
sparkling with eager joy as she suffered him to retain her hand while
she said: "I am so glad to see you, Mr. Remington. I almost thought
you had forgotten me at Aikenside, Jessie and all."