be fulfilled. There was a secret sweetness
in living near Harbury--in stealing, as it were, into a daughter's place
beside the mother of him she still so fervently loved. But, thinking
of him, she did not suffer now. For all great trials there is an unseen
compensation; and this last shock, with the change it had wrought, made
her past sorrows grow dim. Life became sweeter to her, for it was filled
with a new and holy interest. It could be so filled, she found, even
when love had come and vanished, and only duty remained.

She turned from all repining thoughts, and tried to make for herself a
peaceful nest in her little home. And thither, above all, she desired
to allure and to keep, with all gentle wiles of love, her sister.
_Her sister_! Often, yearning for kindred ties, she longed to fall on
Christal's neck, and call her by that tender name! But she knew it could
never be, and her heart had been too long schooled into patience, to
murmur because in every human tie this seemed to be perpetually her
doom--that--save one who was gone--none upon earth had ever loved her as
much as she loved them.

Harold Gwynne wrote frequently from Rome, but only to his mother.
However, he always mentioned Miss Rothesay, and kindly. Once, when Mrs.
Gwynne was unable to write herself, she asked Olive to take her place,
and indulge Harold with a letter.

"He will be so glad, you know. I think of all his friends there is none
whom my son regards more warmly than you," said the mother. And Olive
could not refuse. Why, indeed, should she feel reluctance? He had
never been her lover; she had no right to feel wounded, or angry at his
silence. Certainly, she would write.

She did so. It was a quiet, friendly letter, making no reference to the
past--expressing no regret, no pain. It was scarcely like the earnest
letters which she had once written to him--that time was past. She
tried to make it an epistle as from any ordinary acquaintance--easy
and pleasant, full of everything likely to amuse him. She knew he
would never dream how it was written--with a cold, trembling hand
and throbbing heart, its smooth sentences broken by pauses of burning
blinding tears.

She said little about herself or her own affairs, save to ask that,
being in Rome, he would contrive to find out the Vanbrughs, of whom she
had heard nothing for a long time. Writing, she paused a moment to think
whether she should not apologise for giving him this trouble. But then