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.”
Then briefly Guy explained to her how it all had happened, blaming
himself far more than he did the doctor, who, he said, had repented
bitterly. “Had you died, Miss Clyde, when you were so sick, I half
believe he would have felt it his duty to die also. He likes you very
much; more indeed than any patient I ever knew him to have,” and Guy’s
eyes glanced curiously at Maddy to witness the effect his words might
have upon her. But Maddy merely answered:
“Yes, I think he does like me, and I know I like him.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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