For a moment Maggie looked at her in astonishment; then thinking to herself, “She surely is half-crazed,” she answered laughingly:  “Yes, Hagar, if grandma casts me off, you may go with me.  I shall need your care, but I can’t promise to call you grandma, because you know you are not.”

The corners of Hagar’s mouth worked nervously, but her teeth shut firmly over the thin, white lip, forcing back the wild words trembling there, and the secret was not told.

“Go home, Maggie Miller,” she said at last, rising slowly to her feet.  “Go home now, and leave me alone.  I am willing you should marry Henry Warner—­nay, I wish you to do it; but you must remember your promise.”

Maggie was about to answer, when her thoughts were directed to another channel by the sight of George Douglas and Theo coming slowly down the shaded pathway which led past Hagar’s door.  Old Hagar saw them too, and, whispering to Maggie, said, “There’s another marriage brewing, or the signs do not tell true, and madam will sanction this one, too, for there’s money there, and gold can purify any blood.”

Ere Maggie could reply Theo called out, “You here, Maggie, as usual?” adding, aside, to her companion:  “She has the most unaccountable taste, so different from me, who cannot endure anything low and vulgar.  Can you?  But I need not ask,” she continued, “for your associations have been of a refined nature.”

George Douglas did not answer, for his thoughts were back in the brown farmhouse at the foot of the hill, where his boyhood was passed, and he wondered what the high-bred lady at his side would say if she could see the sunburned man and plain, old-fashioned woman who called him their son George Washington.  He would not confess that he was ashamed of his parentage, for he tried to be a kind and dutiful child, but he would a little rather that Theo Miller should not know how democratic had been his early training.  So he made no answer, but, addressing himself to Maggie, asked how she could find it in her heart to leave her patient so long.

“I’m going back directly,” she said, and donning her hat she started for home, thinking she had gained but little satisfaction from Hagar, who, as Douglas and Theo passed on, resumed her seat by the door, and, listening to the sound of Margaret’s retreating footsteps, muttered:  “The old light-heartedness is gone.  There are shadows gathering round her; for once in love, she’ll never be as free and joyous again.  But it can’t be helped; it’s the destiny of women, and I only hope this Warner is worthy of her.  But he aint.  He’s too wild—­too full of what Hagar Warren calls bedevilment.  And Maggie does everything he tells her to do.  Not content with tearing down his bed-curtains, which have hung there full twenty years, she’s set things all cornerwise, because the folks do so in Worcester, and has turned the parlor into a smoking-room, till all the air of Hillsdale can’t take away that tobacco scent.  Why, it almost knocks me down!” and the old lady groaned aloud, as she recounted to herself the recent innovations upon the time-honored habits of her mistress’ house.