Those were dark, wearisome hours to Maddy, and when the long, cold winter was gone from the New England hills, and the early buds of spring were coming up by the cottage door, the neighbors began to talk of the change which had come over the young girl, once so full of life and health, but now so languid and pale. Still, Maddy was not unhappy, nor was the discipline too severe, for by it she learned at last the great object of life; learned to take her troubles and cares to one who helped her bear them so cheerfully, that those who pitied her most never dreamed how heavy was her burden, so patiently and sweetly she bore it. Occasionally there came to her letters from the doctor, but latterly they gave her less pleasure than pain, for as often as she read one of his kind, friendly messages of sympathy and remembrance, the tempter whispered to her that though she did not love him as she ought to love her husband, a life with him would be far preferable to the life she was living, and a receipt of his letters always gave her a pang which lasted until _Guy_ came down to see her, when it usually disappeared. Agnes was now at Aikenside, and thus Maddy frequently had Jessie at the cottage, but Agnes never came, and Maddy little guessed how often the proud woman cried herself to sleep after listening to Jessie’s recital of all Maddy had to do for the crazy man, and how patiently she did it. He had taken a fancy that Maddy must tell him stories of _Sarah_, describing her as she was now, and not as she used to be when he knew her. “What is she now? How does she look? What does she wear? Tell me, tell me!” he would plead, until Maddy, forced to tell him something, and having distinctly in her mind but _one_ fashionable woman such as she fancied Sarah might be, told him of _Agnes Remington_, describing her as she was in her mature beauty, with her heavy flowing curls, her brilliant color, her flashing diamonds and costly laces, and Uncle Joseph, listening to her with parted lips and hushed breath, would whisper softly, “Yes, that’s Sarah, beautiful Sarah; but tell me—does she ever think of me, or of that time in the orchard when I wove the apple blossoms in her hair, where the diamonds are now? She loved me then; she told me so. Does she know how sick, and sorry, and foolish I am?—how the aching in my poor simple brain is all for her, and how you, poor Maddy, are doing for me what it should have been her place to do? Had I a voice,” and the crazy man would grow excited, as, raising himself in bed, he gesticulated wildly, “had I a voice to reach her, I’d cry shame on her, to let you do her work, let you wear your young life and fresh, bright beauty all away for me, whom she ruined.”