“You needn’t think me so good, for I am not. I wanted Maddy Clyde, and told her so, but she refused me and made me promise to marry Lucy; so I’m going to do that very thing. I am going to England in a few weeks, or as soon as Maddy is better, and before the sun of this year sets I shall be a married man.” After this all Mrs. Noah’s influence was in favor of Maddy, and the good lady made more than one pilgrimage to Honedale, where she expended all her arguments trying to make Maddy revoke her decision; but Maddy was firm in what she deemed right, and as her health began slowly to improve, and there was no longer an excuse for Guy to tarry, he started for England the latter part of October, as unhappy and unwilling a bridegroom, it may be, as ever went after a bride. CHAPTER XXI. THE INTERVAL BEFORE THE MARRIAGE. Maddy never knew how she lived through those bright, autumnal days, when the gorgeous beauty of decaying nature seemed so cruelly to mock her anguish. As long as Guy was there, breathing the same air with herself, she kept up, vaguely conscious of a shadowy hope that something would happen without her instrumentality, something to ease the weight pressing so hard upon her. But when she heard that he had really gone, that a line had been received from him after he was on board the steamer, all hope died out of her heart, and had it been right she would have prayed that she might die, and forget how utterly miserable she was. At last there came to her three letters, one from Lucy, one from the doctor, and one from Guy himself. She opened Lucy’s first, and read of the sweet girl’s great happiness in seeing Guy again, of her sorrow to find him so thin, and pale, and changed, in all save his extreme kindness to her, his careful study of her wants, and evident anxiety to please her in every respect. On this Lucy dwelt, until Maddy’s heart seemed to leap up and almost turn over, so fiercely it throbbed and ached with anguish. She was out in the woods when she read the letter, and laying her face in the grass she sobbed as she never sobbed before. The doctor’s letter was opened next, and Maddy read with blinding tears that which for a moment increased her pain and sent to her heart an added pang of disappointment, or a sense of wrong done to her, she could not tell which. Dr. Holbrook was to be married the same day with Guy, and to Lucy’s sister Margaret.