circumstance, rare enough to
have been welcome, and yet it was not welcome, now subdued his wife and
daughter into silence and quietness. Alas! that ever a presence which
ought to be the sunshine of a household should enter only to cast a
perpetual shade.

The firelight shone on the same trio which had formed the little
after-dinner circle years ago at Stirling. But there was a change in
all. The father and mother sat--not side by side, in that propinquity
which is so sweet, when every breath, every touch of the beloved's
garment gives pleasure; they sat one at each corner of the table,
engrossed in their several occupations; reading with an uncommunicative
eagerness, and sewing in unbroken silence. Each was entrenched within
a chilling circle of thoughts and interests in which the other never
entered. And now the only point of meeting between them was the
once-banished child.

Little Olive was growing almost a woman now, but she was called "little
Olive" still. She retained her diminutive stature, together with her
girlish dress, but her face wore, as ever, its look of premature age.
And as she sat between her father and mother, now helping the one in
her delicate fancy-work, now arranging the lamp for the other's reading,
continually in request by both, or when left quiet for a minute,
watching both with anxious earnestness, there was quite enough in
Olive's manner to show that she had entered on a woman's life of care,
and had not learned a woman's wisdom one day too soon.

The captain's last "my dear" found his wife in the intricacies of
a Berlin-wool pattern, so that she did not speak Again for several
minutes, when she again appealed to "Captain Rothesay." She rarely
called him anything else now. Alas! the time of "Angus" and "Sybilla"
was gone.

"Well, my dear, what have you to say?"

"I wish you would not be always reading, it makes the evening so dull."

"Does it?" and he turned over another leaf of Adam Smith, and leisurely
settled himself for its perusal.

"Papa is tired, and may like to be quiet. Suppose we talk to one
another, mamma?" whispered Olive, as she put aside her own work--idle,
but graceful designings with pencil and paper--and drawing near to her
mother, began to converse in a low tone. She discussed all questions as
to whether the rose should be red or white, and what coloured wool
would form the striped tulip, just as though they had been the most
interesting topics in the world. Only