Then she spoke of
Maddy Clyde, saying "She was not one bit 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?"
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. But Lucy's was a different nature, and though it cost her
pride a pang, she asked for a line from Maddy, partly to mortify that
pride, and partly to prove to Guy how free she was from jealousy.
"Darling little Lucy, I do love her very dearly," was Guy's comment,
as he finished reading her letter, feeling somewhat 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 much easier of access New York was than Brighton, he said, half
petulantly:
"I've been to England for nothing times enough.
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