,
during the evening--thoughts of the marriage which had been "not quite
happy." This fact scarcely surprised her. The more she began to know of
Mr. Gwynne--and she had seen a great deal of him, considering the few
weeks of their acquaintance--the more she marvelled that he had ever
chosen Sara Derwent for his wife. Their union must have been like that
of night and day, fierce fire and unstable water. Olive longed to fathom
the mystery, and could not resist saying.

"You were talking of your sister a-while ago. I stopped you, for I saw
it pained mamma. But now I should so like to hear something about my
poor Sara."

"I can tell you little, for I was a boy when she died. But things I then
little noticed, I put together afterwards. It must have been quite a
romance, I think. You know my sister had a former lover--Charles Geddes.
Do you remember him?"

"I do--well!" and Olive sighed--perhaps over the remembrance of the
dream born in that fairy time--her first girlish dream of ideal love.

"He was at sea when Sara married. On his return the news almost drove
him wild. I remember his coming in the garden--our old garden, you
know--where he and Sara used to walk. He seemed half mad, and I went to
him, and comforted him as well as I could, though little I understood
his grief. Perhaps I should now!" said Lyle, lifting his eyes with
rather a doleful, sentimental air; which, alas! was all lost upon his
companion.

"Poor Charles!" she murmured. "But tell me more."

"He persuaded me to take back all her letters, together with one from
himself, and give them to my sister the next time I went to Harbury. I
did so. Well I remember that night! Harold came in, and found his wife
crying over the letters. In a fit of jealousy he took them and read them
all through--together with that of Charles. He did not see me, or know
the part I had in the matter, but I shall never forget _him_."

"What did he do?" asked Olive, eagerly. Strange that her question and
her thoughts were not of Sara, but of Harold.

"Do? nothing! But his words--I remember them distinctly, they were so
freezing, so stern. He grasped her arm, and said, 'Sara, when you said
you loved me, you uttered _a lie!_ When you took your marriage oath,
you vowed _a lie!_ Every day since, that you have smiled in my face, you
have looked _a lie!_ Henceforth I will never trust you--or any woman. '"

"And what followed?" cried Olive, now so strongly interested that she
never pa