just received your letter. Yes! yours is a wise and kindly
plan; I will write at once to Aunt Flora about it. Poor Christal!
perhaps she may find peace as a novice at St. Margaret's. Some little
fear I had in communicating the scheme to her; for she still shudders at
the very mention of her father's name, and she might refuse to go to
her father's land. But she is so helpless in body and mind, that in
everything she has at last implicitly trusted to my guidance."

"I suppose you, too, have heard from Edinburgh? Dear Aunt Flora! who,
despite her growing feebleness, is continually seeking to do good. I,
like you, judged it better not to tell her the whole story; but only
that Christal was an orphan who had suffered much. At St. Margaret's
she will see no one but the good nuns, until, as your aunt proposes, you
yourself go to Edinburgh. You may be your sister's saving angel still."

"Christal is gone. Lady Arundale herself will take her safe to St.
Margaret's, where your aunt has arranged all Olive, we must not fail
both to go to Edinburgh soon. Something tells me this will be the last
good deed done on earth by our noble aunt Flora. For what you say in
your last letter, thank you! But why do you talk of gratitude? All I
ever did was not half worthy of you. You ask of myself, and my plans?
I have thought little of either lately, but I shall now. Tell my mother
that all her letters came safe, and welcome--especially _the first_ she
wrote."

"Lord Arundale stays abroad until the year's close. For me, in the early
spring, when I have finished my duties with him, I shall come home.
_Home!_ Thank God!"

CHAPTER XLVI.

Night and day there rung in Olive's heart the last words of Harold's
letter, "I shall come home!" Simple they were; but they seemed so
strangely joyful--so full of hope. She could not tell why, but thinking
of him now, her whole world seemed to change. He was coming back! With
him came spring and sunshine, youth and hope!

It was yet early in the year. The little crocuses peeped out--the
violets purpled the banks. Now and then came soft west winds, sighing
sweetness over the earth. Not a breeze passed her by--not a flower
sprang in her sight--not one sunny day dawned to ripen the growing year,
but Olive's heart leaped within her; for she said, "He will come with
the spring--he will come with the spring!"

How and with what mind he would come--whether he would tell her he loved
her, or ask her to be