"Yes," came faintly from the parted lips, about which there was a
slight quiver as she put up her hand to take the case Guy drew from
his bosom.
Turning it to the light she gazed silently upon the sweet young face,
which seemed to return her gaze with a look as earnest and lifelike as
her own.
"What do you think of her--of my Lucy? Is she not pretty?" Guy asked,
bending down so that his dark hair swept against Maddy's, while his
warm breath touched her burning cheeks.
"Yes, she's beautiful, oh! so beautiful, and happy, too. I wish I had
been like her. I wish--" and Maddy burst into a most uncontrollable
fit of weeping, her tears dropping like rain upon the inanimate
features of Lucy Atherstone.
Guy looked at her amazed, his own heart throbbing with a keen pang of
something undefinable as he listened to her stormy weeping. What did
ail her? he wondered. Could it be that the evil against which he was
providing had really come upon her? Was Maddy more interested in him
than he supposed? He hoped not, though with a man's vanity he felt a
slight thrill of satisfaction in thinking that it might be so. Guy
knew this feeling was not worthy of him, and he struggled to cast it
off, while he asked Maddy why she cried.
Child as she was, the real cause of her tears never entered her brain,
and she answered: "I can't tell why, unless I was thinking how different Miss Atherstone
is from me. She's rich and handsome. I am poor and homely, and--"
"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 now upon his knee
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'd been so happy here that I
guess I'd come to think that you only liked Jessie and me. Of course I
knew that some time you would see and think all the world of somebody
else, but I did not expect it so soon. I am afraid Miss Atherstone
will not fancy me, and I know most I shall not feel as free here,
after she comes, as I do now. Then your being so good, 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."