But Maddy could not so soon forget. All through the day the conviction
had been settling upon her that she could not stay at Aikenside, and
so on the following morning, just after breakfast was over, she
summoned courage to ask Mr. Guy if she might talk with film. Leading
the way to his library, he bade her sit down, while he took the chair
opposite, and then waited for her to commence.
Maddy was afraid of Guy. He did not seem quite like Dr. Holbrook. He
was haughtier in his appearance, while his rather elaborate style of
dress and polished manners gave him, in her estimation, a kind of
superiority over all the men she had ever met. Besides that, she
remembered how his dark eyes had flashed when she told him what she
did the previous day, and also that she had said to his face that she
hated him. She could not bear to leave a bad impression on his mind,
so the first words she said to him were: "Mr. Remington, I can't stay here after all that has happened. It
would not be pleasant for me or Mrs. Agnes, so I am going home, but I
want you to forget what I said about hating you yesterday. I did not
then know who you were. I don't hate you. I like you, and I want you
to like me."
She did not look at him, for her eyelids were cast down, and her
lashes were wet with the tears she could scarcely keep from shedding.
Guy had never known much about girls of Maddy's age, and there was
something extremely fascinating in the artless simplicity of this half
child, half woman, sitting there before him, and asking him so
demurely to like her. She was very pretty, he thought, and with proper
culture would make a beautiful woman. Then, as he remembered his
avowed intention of urging the doctor to make her his wife some day,
the idea flashed upon him that it would be very generous, very
magnanimous in him to educate that young girl expressly for the
doctor, and though he hardly seemed to wait at all ere replying to
Maddy, he had in the brief interval formed a skeleton plan, and saw it
in all its bearings and triumphal result.
"I am much obliged for your liking me," he said, a very little
mischievously. "You surely have not much reason so to do when you
recall the incidents of our first interview. Maddy--Miss Clyde--I have
come to the conclusion that I knew less than you did, and I beg your
pardon for annoying you so terribly."