without loving any man. And no one has ever wooed me
except my master, Vanbrugh, whose feeling for me was not love at all.
No, no! I am, as they call me, 'an old maid,' destined to pass through
life alone and unloved.

"Perhaps, though I have long ceased to think on the subject--perhaps
my first girlish misery was true, and there is in me something
repulsive--something that would prevent any man's seeking me as a wife.
Therefore, even if my own feelings could change, it is unlikely there
will ever come any soothing after-tie to take away the memory of this
utterly hopeless love.

"Hopeless I know it is. He admires beauty and grace--I have neither. Yet
I will not do him the injustice to believe he would despise me for this.
Even once I overheard him say, there was such sweetness in my face, that
he had never noticed my being 'slightly deformed.' Therefore, did he but
love me, perhaps--O fool!--dreaming fool that I am! It is impossible!

"Let me think calmly once more. He has given me all he could--kindness,
friendship, brotherly regard; and I have given him love--a woman's whole
and entire love, such as she can give but once, and be beggared all her
life after. I to him am like any other friend--he to me is all my world.
Oh, but it is a fearful difference!

"I will look my doom in the face--I will consider how I am to bear it.
No hope is there for me of being loved as I love. I shall never be his
wife: never be more to him than I am now; in time, perhaps even less.
He will go out into the world, and leave me, as brothers leave sisters
(even supposing he regards me as such). He will form new ties; perhaps
he will marry; and then my love for him would be sin!"

Olive pressed her hands tightly together, and crushed her hot brow upon
them, bending it even to her knees. Thus bowed, she lay until the fierce
struggle passed.

"I do not think that misery will come. His mother, who knows him best,
was surely right when she said he would never take a second wife.
Therefore I may be his friend still. Neither he nor any one will ever
know that I loved him otherwise than as a sister might love a brother.
Who would dream there could be any other thought in me--a pale, unlovely
thing--a woman past her youth (for I seem very old now)? It ought not to
be so; many women are counted young at six-and-twenty; but it is those
who have been nurtured tenderly in joyous homes. While I have been
struggling with the hard world these many ye