me forget everything that was once. Perhaps, too, she
is not to blame. I knew Charles Geddes; Sara might not like to speak of
me to her husband?"

Yet, with a look of bitter pain, Olive wrote the address of her
letter--"Harbury Parsonage"--Sara's home! She lingered, too, over the
name of Sara's husband.

"_Harold Gwynne!_ Oh, mamma! how different names look! I cannot bear the
sight of this! I hate it."

Years after, Olive remembered these words.

CHAPTER XX.

If the old painter of Woodford Cottage was an ascetic and a misanthrope
never was the "milk of human kindness" so redundant in any human heart
as in that of his excellent little sister, Miss Meliora Vanbrugh. From
the day of her birth, when her indigent father's anticipation of a
bequeathed fortune had caused her rather eccentric Christian name,
Miss Meliora began a chase after the wayward sprite Prosperity. She had
hunted it during her whole lifetime, and never caught anything but its
departing shadow. She had never grown rich, though she was always hoping
to do so. She had never married, for no one had ever asked her. Whether
she had loved--but that was another question. She had probably quite
forgotten the days of her youth; at all events, she never talked about
them now.

But though to herself her name had been a mockery, to others it was not
so. Wherever she went, she always brought "better things"--at least in
anticipation. She was the most hopeful little body in the world, and
carried with her a score of consolatory proverbs, about "long lanes"
that had most fortunate "turnings," and "cloudy mornings" that were sure
to change into "very fine days." She had always in her heart a garden
full of small budding blessings; and though they never burst into
flowers, she kept on ever expecting they would do so, and was therefore
quite satisfied. Poor Miss Meliora! if her hopes never blossomed, she
also never had the grief of watching them die.

Her whole life had been pervaded by one grand desire--to see her brother
president of the Royal Academy. When she was a school-girl and he a
student, she had secretly sketched his likeness--the only one extant of
his ugly, yet soul-lighted face--and had prefixed thereto his name,
with the magic letters, "P. B. A." She felt sure the prophecy would be
fulfilled one day, and then she would show him the portrait, and let
her humble, sisterly love go down to posterity on the hem of his robe of
fame.

Meliora told