Strengthened by her almost
masculine power of mind, she learned to comprehend and to reverence
the mighty masters whom Vanbrugh loved. He led her to those heights and
depths which are rarely opened to a woman's ken. And she, following,
applied herself to the most abstruse of Art-studies. Still, as he had
said, there were bounds that she could not pass; but as far as in her
lay, she sought to lift herself above her sex's weakness and want of
perseverance; and by labour from which most women would have shrunk, to
make herself worthy of being ranked among those painters who are "not
for an age, but for all time."

That personal deformity which she thought excluded her from a woman's
natural destiny, gave her freedom in her own. Brought into contact
with the world, she scarcely felt like a young and timid girl, but as
a being--isolated, yet strong in her isolation; who mingles, and must
mingle among men, not as a woman, but as one who, like themselves,
pursues her own calling, has her own aim; and can therefore step aside
for no vain fear, nor sink beneath any foolish shame. And wherever she
went, her own perfect innocence wrapped her round as with a shield.

Still, little quiet Olive could do many things with an independence that
would have been impossible to a girl lively and beautiful Oftentimes
Mrs. Rothesay trembled and murmured at days of solitary study in the
British Museum, and in various picture-galleries; long lonely walks,
sometimes in winter-time extending far into the dusk of evening. But
Olive always answered, with a pensive smile,

"Nay, mother; I am quite safe everywhere. Remember, I am not like other
girls. Who would notice _me_?"

But she always accompanied any painful allusion of this kind by saying
how happy she was in being so free, and how fortunate it seemed that
there could be nothing to hinder her from following her heart's
desire. She was growing as great an optimist as Miss Meliora herself,
who--cheerful little soul--was in the seventh heaven of delight whenever
she heard her brother acknowledge Olive's progress.

"And don't you see, my dear Miss Rothesay," she said sometimes, "that
everything always turns out for the best; and that if you had not been
so unhappy, and I had not come in and found you crying, you might have
gone on pining in secret, instead of growing up to be an artist."

Olive assented, and confessed it was rather strange that out of her
chiefest trouble should have arisen