But Guy did speak of her, frankly confessing the interest he felt in her, telling just how people were beginning to talk, and asking Lucy if she cared, declaring that, if she did, he would not see Maddy Clyde any more than was necessary. In a little less than four weeks there came an answer from Lucy, who, with health somewhat improved, had returned to England, and wrote to Guy from Switzerland, where she expected to spend the summer, half hoping Guy might join her there, though she could not urge it, as her mother still insisted that she was not able to take upon herself the duties of a wife. Then she spoke of Maddy Clyde, saying “She was not at all jealous of her dear Guy. Of course ignorant, meddling people, of whom she feared there were a great many in America, would gossip, but he was not to mind them.” Then she said that if Maddy were willing, she would so much like her picture, as she had a curiosity to know just how she looked, and if Maddy pleased, “would she write a few lines, so as not to seem so much a stranger?” “Darling little Lucy, I do love her very dearly,” was Guy’s comment, as he finished reading her letter, feeling for the moment as if her mother were a kind of cruel ogress, bent on preventing him from being happy. Then, as he remembered Lucy’s hope that he might join her, and thought how many times he had crossed the sea to no purpose, he said, half petulantly: “I’ve been to England for nothing times enough. When that mother of hers says I may have her daughter, I’ll go again, but not before. It don’t pay.” And crushing the letter into his pocket, he went out upon the piazza, where were assembled Maddy, Jessie, and Mrs. Agnes, the latter of whom had come to Aikenside the day before. At first she had objected to the boarding-school arrangement, saying Jessie was too young; but Guy, as usual, had overruled her objections, as he had those of Grandpa Markham, and it was now a settled thing that Maddy and Jessie both should go to New York. Mrs. Agnes was to accompany them if she chose, and having a general supervision of her child. This was Guy’s plan, and it had prevailed with the fashionable woman, who, tired of Boston, was well pleased with the prospect of a life in New York. Guy’s interest in Maddy was wholly inexplicable to her, unless she explained it on the principle that in the Remington nature there was a fondness for governesses, as had been exemplified in her own history. That Guy would ever marry Maddy she doubted, but the mere possibility of it made her set her teeth firmly together as she thought how embarrassing it would be to acknowledge as the mistress of Aikenside the little girl whom she had sought to banish from her table. Since her return she had had no opportunity of judging for herself how matters stood, and was consequently much relieved when, as Guy joined them, he began at once to speak of Lucy, telling of the letter, and her request for Maddy’s picture.