d a few
minutes after went into her chamber, locked the door, and wept.

There was not, and there could not be, any difference made in her
ordinary way of life. She still went to the Parsonage, and walked and
talked with Harold, as he seemed always to expect. She listened to all
his projects for the future--a future wherein she, alas! had no part
Eagerly she strove to impress this fact upon her mind--to forget
herself entirely, to think only of him, and what would be best for his
happiness. Knowing him so well, and having over him an influence which
he seemed rather to like, and which, at least, he never repelled, she
was able continually to reason, to cheer him, and sympathise with him.
He often thanked her for this, little knowing how every quiet word of
hers was torn from a bleeding heart.

Walking home with her at nights, as usual, he never saw the white face
turned upwards to the stars--the eyes wherein tears burned, but would
not fall; the lips compressed in a choking agony, or opened to utter
ordinary words in which his ear detected not one tremulous or discordant
tone. When he sat in the house, absorbed in anxious thought, little he
knew what looks were secretly fastened on his face, to learn by heart
every beloved lineament, against the time when his visible likeness
would be beheld no more.

Thus miserably did Olive struggle. The record of that time, its every
day, its every hour, was seared on her heart as with a burning brand.
Afterwards she never thought of it but with a shudder, marvelling how
she had been able to endure all and live.

At last the inward suffering began to be outwardly written on her face.
Some people said--Lyle Derwent first--that Miss Rothesay did not look
so well as she used to do. But indeed it was no wonder, she was so
engrossed in her painting, and worked far too much for her strength.
Olive neither dissented nor denied: but she never complained, and still
went painting on. Harold himself saw she was ill, and sometimes treated
her with almost brotherly tenderness. Often he noticed her pale face,
paler than ever beneath his eye, or, in wrapping her from the cold,
observed how she shivered and trembled. And then Olive would go home and
cry out in her misery,

"How long? how long? Oh, that this would cease, or else I die!"

She was quite alone at the Dell now, for Mrs. Fludyer had paid a flying
visit home, and had taken back with her both Christal and the somewhat
unwilling Lyle.