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.” Maddy’s voice was very steady in its tone. She evidently meant what she said, but Guy, the bad man, did not feel as graciously as he ought to have felt in knowing that Maddy Clyde was glad “Lucy loved him, and was to be his wife.” Guy was 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, or less a child, she 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 heir; and while talking with Jessie of the grand times they should have at school, she marveled at that little round 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.