Governesses -- Fiction; Love stories; New England -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
His room was in perfect order, as was everything about the house,
showing that Flora was still the domestic goddess, while Maddy detected
also various things which she recognized as having come from Aikenside.
Who sent them? Did Guy, and had he been there too while she was sick?
The thought brought a throb of joy to Maddy’s heart, but it soon passed
away as she began again to wonder if Uncle Joseph, too, had died, and
where Flora was. It was not far to the Honedale burying-ground, and
Maddy could see the head-stones gleaming through the August sunlight;
could discern her mother’s, and knew that two fresh mounds at least were
made beside it. But were there three? Was Uncle Joseph there? By
stealing across the meadow in the rear of the house the distance to the
graveyard was shortened more than half, and could not be more than the
eighth part of a mile. She could walk so far, she knew. The fresh air
would do her good, and hunting up her long unused hat, the impatient
girl started, stopping once or twice to rest as a dizzy faintness came
over her, and then continuing on until the spot she sought was reached.
There were three graves, one old and sunken, one made when the last
winter’s snow was on the hills, the other fresh and new. That was all.
Uncle Joseph was not there, and vague terror entered Maddy’s heart lest
he had been taken back to the asylum.
“I will get him out,” she said; “I will take care of him. I should die
with nothing to do; and I promised grandpa——”
She could get no further, for the rush of memories which came over her,
and seating herself upon the ground close to the new grave, she laid her
face upon it, and sobbed piteously:
“Oh, grandpa, I’m so lonely without you all; I almost wish I was lying
here in the quiet yard.”
Then a storm of tears ensued, after which Maddy grew calm, and with her
head still bent down did not hear the rapid step coming down the grassy
road, past the marble tomb-stones, to where she was crouching upon the
ground. There it stopped, and in a half whisper some one called, “Maddy!
Maddy!”
Then she started, and lifting up her head saw before her Guy Remington.
For a moment she regarded him intently, while he said to her, kindly,
pityingly:
“Poor child, you have suffered so much, and I never knew of it till a
few days ago.”
At the sound of that loved voice speaking thus to her, everything else
was forgotten, and with a cry of joy Maddy stretched her hands toward
him, moaning out:
“Oh, Guy, Guy, where have you been, when I wanted you so much?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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