once.

"My child, are you still there?".

"Yes, darling."

"That is well. All is well now. Little Olive, kiss me."

Olive bent down and kissed her. With that last kiss she received her
mother's soul.

Then she suffered the old servant to lead her from the room. She never
wept; it would have appeared sacrilege to weep. She went to the open
door, and stood, looking to the east, where the sun was rising. Through
the golden clouds she almost seemed to behold, ascending, the freed
spirit upon whom had just dawned the everlasting morning.

An hour after, when she was all alone in the little parlour, lying on
the sofa with her eyes closed, she heard entering a well-known step. It
was Harold Gwynne's. He looked much agitated; at first he drew back,
as though fearing to approach; then he came up, and took her hand very
tenderly.

"Alas, Miss Rothesay, what can I say to you?"

She shed a few tears, less for her own sorrow than because she was
touched by his kindness.

"I would have been here yesterday," continued he, "but I was away from
Harbury. Yet, what help, what comfort, could you have received from me?"

Olive turned to him her face, in whose pale serenity yet lingered the
light which had guided her through the valley of the shadow of death.

"God," she whispered, "has helped me. He has taken from me the desire of
my eyes, and yet I have peace--perfect peace!"

Harold looked at her with astonishment.

"Tell me," he muttered, involuntarily, "whence comes this peace!"

"From God, as I feel him in my soul--as I read of Him in the revelation
of his Word."

Harold was silent. His aspect of hopeless misery went to Olive's heart.

"Oh that I could give to you this peace--this faith!"

"Alas! if I knew what _reason_ you have for yours."

Olive paused. An awful thing it was, with the dead lying in the chamber
above, to wrestle with the unbelief of the living. But it seemed as if
the spirit of her mother had passed into her spirit, giving her strength
to speak with words not her own. What if, in the inscrutable purposes of
Heaven, this hour of death was to be to him an hour of new birth?

So, repressing all grief and weakness, Olive said, "Let us talk a little
of the things which in times like this come home to us as the only
realities."

"To you, not to me! You forget the gulf between us!"

"Nay," Olive said, earnestly; "you believe, as I do, in one God--the
Creator and Ruler of this world?"

Harold made