him at the gate she ran out to meet him, her eyes and face sparkling with eager joy as she suffered him to retain her hand, while she said, “I am so glad to see you, Mr. Remington. I almost thought you had forgotten me at Aikenside.” Guy began to exclaim against any one’s forgetting her, and also to express his pleasure at finding her so glad to see him, when Maddy interrupted him with, “Oh, it’s not that; I’ve something to show you—something which will make you very happy. I had a letter from Lucy last night. When she is twenty-five she will be her own mistress, you know, and she means to be married in spite of her mother—she says—let me see—” and drawing from her bosom Lucy’s letter, Maddy read, “‘I do not intend to fail in filial obedience, but I have tired dear Guy’s patience long enough, and as soon as I am of age I shall marry him.’ Isn’t it nice?” and returning the letter to its hiding-place, Maddy scooped up in her hand and ate a quantity of the snow beside the path. “Yes, it is very nice,” Guy admitted, but there was a shadow on his brow as he followed Maddy into the cottage, where the lunatic, who had been watching them from the window, shook his head doubtfully and said, “Too young, too young for you, young man. You can’t have our Sunshine, if you want her.” “Hush, Uncle Joseph,” Maddy whispered, softly, taking his arm and laying it around her neck. “Mr. Remington don’t want me. He is engaged to a beautiful English girl across the sea.” Low as Maddy’s words were, Guy heard them, as well as the crazy man’s reply, “Engagements have been broken.” That was the first time the possibility had ever entered Guy’s brain that his engagement might be broken, provided he wished it, which he did not, he said to himself positively. Lucy loved him, he loved Lucy, and that was enough; so in a kind of abstracted manner, arising from the fact that he was calculating how long it would be before Lucy was twenty-five, he began to talk with Maddy, asking how she had spent her time, and so forth. This reminded Maddy of the doctor, who, she said, had not been to see her at all. “He was coming this morning,” Guy rejoined, “but I persuaded him to defer his call until you were at Aikenside. I have come to take you back with me, as we are to have a party day after to-morrow evening, and I wish you to be present.”