wards find, that, like charity,
the more you gave the richer was your store.

Enter from the garden into the drawing-room, and you will perceive a
change, too. Its dreariness has been softened by many a graceful adjunct
of comfort and luxury. Half of it, by means of a crimson screen, is
transformed into a painting-room. Olive would have it so; for several
reasons, the chief of which was, that whether the young paintress was
working or not, Mrs. Rothesay might never be out of the sound of her
daughter's voice. For, alas! this same sweet love-toned voice was all
the mother now knew of Olive!

Gradually there had come over Mrs. Rothesay the misfortune which she
feared. She was now blind. Relating this, it may seem though we
were about to picture a scene of grief and desolation: but not so. A
misfortune that steals on year by year, slowly, inevitably, often comes
with so light a footstep that we scarcely hear it. In this manner had
come Mrs. Rothesay's blindness. Her sight faded so gradually, that its
deprivation caused no despondency; and the more helpless she grew, the
closer she was clasped by those supporting arms of filial love, which
softened all pain, supplied all need, and were to her instead of
strength, youth, eyesight!

One only bitterness did she know--that she could not see Olive's
pictures. Not that she understood Art at all; but everything that Olive
did _must_ be beautiful. She missed nought else, not even her daughter's
face, for she saw it continually in her heart Perhaps in the grey shadow
of a form, which she said her eyes could still trace in the dim haze,
she pictured the likeness of an Olive ten times fairer than the real
one: an Olive whose cheek never grew pale with toil, whose brow was
never crossed by that cloud of heart-weariness which all who labour in
an intellectual pursuit must know at times. If so, the mother was saved
from many of the pangs which visit those who see their beloved ones
staggering under a burden which they themselves have no power either to
bear or to take away.

And so, in spite of this affliction, the mother and daughter were happy,
even quite cheerful sometimes. For cheerfulness, originally foreign to
Olive's nature, had sprung up there--one of those heart-flowers which
Love, passing by, sows according as they are needed, until they bloom as
though indigenous to the soil. To hear Miss Rothesay laugh, as she was
laughing just now, you would have thought she was the merr