It was dark when he reached home, and as the evening had closed in with a heavy rain, the house presented rather a cheerless appearance, particularly as, in consequence of Mrs. Noah’s not expecting him that day, no fires had been kindled in the parlors, or in any room except the library. There a bright coal fire was blazing in the grate, and thither Guy repaired, finding there, as he expected, Jessie and her teacher. Not liking to intrude on Mr. Guy, of whom she still stood somewhat in awe, Maddy soon arose to leave, but Guy bade her stay; he should be lonely without her, he said; and so, bringing her work, she sat down to sew, while Jessie looked over a book of prints, and Guy upon the lounge studied the face which, it seemed to him, grew each day more and more beautiful. Then he talked with her of books, and the lessons which were to be resumed on the morrow, watching her as her bright face sparkled and glowed with excitement. Then he questioned her of her father’s family, feeling a strange sense of satisfaction in knowing that the Clydes were not a race of whose blood any one need be ashamed; and Maddy was more like them, he was sure, than like the Markhams, and Guy shivered a little as he recalled the peculiar dialect of Mr. and Mrs. Markham, and remembered that they were Maddy’s grandparents. Not that it was anything to him. Only as an inmate of his family he felt interested in her, more so perhaps than young men were apt to be interested in their sister’s governess. Had Guy then been asked the question, he would, in all probability, have acknowledged that in his heart there was a feeling of superiority to Maddy Clyde; that she was not quite the equal of Aikenside’s heir, nor yet of Lucy Atherstone. It was natural; he had been educated to feel the difference, but any haughty arrogance of which he might have been guilty was kept down by his extreme good sense, and generous, impulsive nature. He liked Maddy; he liked to look at her as, in the becoming crimson merino which he really and Jessie nominally had given her, she sat before him, with the firelight falling on her beautiful hair, and making shadows on her sunny face. Guy was luxurious in his tastes and it seemed to him that Maddy was just the picture to set off that room, or, in fact, all the rooms at Aikenside. She would disgrace none of them, and he found himself wishing that Providence had made her something to him—sister or cousin, or anything that would make her one of the Remington line. It did not take long for the people in the neighborhood to hear that Guy Remington had turned schoolmaster, and had in his library for two hours or more each day Jessie’s little girl-governess, about whose beauty there was so much said; people wondering, as people will, where it would end, and if it could be possible that the haughty Guy had forgotten his English _fiancée_ and was educating a wife.