--most rare circumstance!--some
guests to visit them. Olive seemed to shrink painfully at this news.

"What, my child, are you not pleased?--It will make the house less dull
for you."

"No, no--I do not wish; oh, mamma! if I could only shut myself up, and
never see any one but you"---- And Olive turned very pale. At
last, resolutely trying to speak without any show of trouble, she
continued--"I have found out something that I never knew--at least,
never thought of before--that I am different from other girls. Oh,
mother! am I really deformed?"

She spoke with much agitation. Mrs. Rothesay burst into tears.

"Oh, Olive! how wretched you make me, to talk thus. Unhappy mother that
I am! Why should Heaven have punished me thus?"

"Punished you, mother?"

"Nay, my child--my poor, innocent child! I did not mean that," cried
Mrs. Rothesay, embracing her with a passionate revulsion of feeling.

But the word was said,--to linger for ever after on Olive's mind. It
brought back the look once written on her childish memory--grown faint,
but never quite erased--her father's first look. She understood it now.

Mrs. Rothesay continued weeping, and Olive had to cast aside all other
feelings in the care of soothing her mother. She succeeded at last;
but she learnt at the same time that on this one subject there must be
silence between them for ever. It seemed, also, to her sensitive nature,
as if every tear and every complaining word were a reproach to the
mother that bore her. Henceforth her bitter thoughts must be wrestled
with alone.

She did so wrestle with them. She walked out into her favourite
meadow--now lying in the silent, frost-bound mistiness of a January day.
It was where she had often been in summer with Sara, and Charles Geddes,
and the little boys. Now everything seemed so wintry and lonely. What
if her own future life were so--one long winter-day, wherein was neither
beauty, gladness, nor love?

[Illustration: Page 88, She walked out into her favourite meadow]

"I am 'deformed.' That was Sara's own word," murmured Olive to herself.
"If this is felt by one who loves me, what must I appear to the world?
Will not all shrink from me--and even those who pity, turn away in pain.
As for loving me"----

Thinking thus, Olive's fancy began to count, almost in despair, all
those whose affection she had ever known. There was Elspie, there were
her parents. Yet, the love of both father and mother--how sweet soever
now