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Lucy Atherstone had been educated to think a great deal of birth, and blood, and family, and Guy never did a wiser thing than when he told her that according to English views, Maddy was a lady. It went far toward reconciling Lucy to his interest in one whom her haughtier and more sanguine mother called a rival, advising her mother to ignore her altogether.
"'If my son takes to him a wife of the daughters of Heth, what good shall my life be unto me?" quoted Coryston, laughing. "Good gracious, how handy the Bible comes in for most things! I expect you're an infidel, and don't know." He looked up curiously at Atherstone. A shade of annoyance crossed Atherstone's finely marked face. "I was the son of a Presbyterian minister," he said, shortly.
It did strike the doctor a little comically that one of Guy's habits should offer to turn school teacher, but Maddy was so glad, that he was glad too, and doubly glad that across the sea there was a Lucy Atherstone. How he wished that she was there now as Mrs. Guy, and he must tell Guy so that very day.
He hoped not, though with a man's vanity he felt a slight thrill of satisfaction in thinking that it might be so. Guy knew this feeling was not worthy of him, and he struggled to cast it off, while he asked Maddy why she cried. Child as she was, the real cause of her tears never entered her brain, and she answered: "I can't tell why, unless I was thinking how different Miss Atherstone is from me.
After a long conversation, in which Evelyn disclosed that Ralph was possessed of the most extraordinary knowledge and experience in such matters, the two good-natured young people, seeing he was depressed and lonely, begged him to come and stay with them at Atherstone the very next day, when he might discuss his affairs with Ralph, if so disposed, and take counsel with him.
Occasionally at first, and more frequently afterward, he spoke of Margaret Atherstone, Lucy's younger sister, a brilliant, beautiful girl who reminded him, he said, of Maddy, only she was saucier, and more of a tease; not at all like Lucy, whom he described as something perfectly angelic. Her twenty-fifth birthday found her on a sickbed, with Dr.
Guy had never met with so much frankness and simplicity in any one, unless it were in Lucy Atherstone, of whom Maddy reminded him somewhat, except that the latter was more practical, more he hardly knew what only there was a difference, and a thought crossed his mind that if Maddy had had all Lucy's advantages, and was as old, she would be what the world calls smarter.
But now for a few days he had a rival, for Maddy's thoughts were all given to the doctor, who came down to see her once before starting for Europe. She did not cry while he was there, but her voice was strange and hoarse as she gave him messages for Lucy Atherstone; and all that day her face was white and sad, as are the faces of those who come back from burying their dead.
To her ardent imagination Lucy Atherstone was but a little lower than the angels, and the pure, sweet thoughts contained in every letter were doing almost as much toward molding her character as Grandpa Markham's prayers and constant teachings. Maddy did not know it, but it was these letters from Lucy which kept her from loving Guy Remington.
Marion took stock of them, provided them with food and lodging, and did not much believe in any of them. Atherstone was a philosopher, a free-thinker, and a vegetarian. Marion read the Church Family Times, went diligently to church, and if she had possessed a vote, and cared enough about it to use it, would probably have voted Tory.
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