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.

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At last there came to her three letters, one from Lucy, one from the

doctor, and one from Guy himself. Lucy's she opened first, reading of

the sweet girl's great happiness in seeing her darling boy 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 in its casing, so

fiercely it throbbed and ached with anguish. She was out in the

beechen woods when she read the letter, and laying her face in the

grass she sobbed as she had never sobbed before.

The doctor's next was opened, and Maddy read with blinding tears that

which for a moment increased her pain and sent to her bleeding 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

Lucy, and to Lucy's sister, Margaret.

"Maggie, I call her," he wrote, "because that name is so much like my

first love, Maddy, the little girl who though I was too old to be her

husband, and so made me very wretched for a time, until I met and knew

Margaret Atherstone. I have told her of you, Maddy; I would not marry

her without, and she seems willing to take me as I am. We shall come

home with Guy, who is the mere wreck of what he was when I last saw

him. He has told me, Maddy, all about it, and though I doubly respect

you now, I cannot say that I think you did quite right. Better that

one should suffer than two, and Lucy's is a nature which will forget

far sooner than yours or Guy's. I pity you all."




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