sometimes does, the
sweetness of a brave resolve, the joy of finding that it is not needed.
Scarcely had Olive and her betrothed prepared to meet their future and
go on, faithfully loving, though perhaps unwedded for years, when a
change came. They learned that Mrs. Flora Rothesay, by a will made a
little before her death, had devised her whole fortune to Harold, on
condition that he should take the name of his ancestors on the mother's
side, and be henceforth Harold Gordon Gwynne. She made no reservations,
save that she wished her house and personal property at Morningside to
go to her grand-niece Olive, adding in the will the following sentence:

"I leave her this and _no more_, that she may understand how deeply I
reverenced her true woman's nature, and how dearly I loved herself."

And Olive did understand all; but she hid the knowledge in her rejoicing
heart, both then and always. It was the only secret she ever kept from
her husband.

She had been married some weeks only; yet she felt as if the old life
had been years gone by, so faint and dreamlike did it seem. Hers was a
very quiet marriage--a quiet honeymoon; fit crowning of a love which
had been so solemn, almost sad, from its beginning to its end. Its
_end_?--say, rather, its new dawn;--its fulfilment in a deeper, holier
bond than is ever dreamed of by girlish sentiment or boyish passion--the
still, sacred love of marriage. And, however your modern infidels may
doubt, and your free-thinking heart-desecrators scoff, _that_ is the
true love--the tie which God created from the beginning, making man and
woman to be one flesh, and pronouncing it "good."

It is good! None can question it who sees the look of peace and full
contentment--a look whose like one never beholds in the wide world save
then, as it sits smiling on the face of a bride who has married for true
love. Very rare it is, indeed--rare as such marriages ever are; but one
sees it sometimes;--we saw it, reader, a while since, on a young
wife's face, and it made us think of little Olive in her happy home at
Morningside.

She stood by the window for a minute or two, her artist-soul drinking
in all that was beautiful in the scene; then she went about her little
household duties, already grown so sweet. She took care that Mrs.
Gwynne's easy-chair was placed in its proper angle by the fire, and
that Harold had beside his plate the great ugly scientific book which
he always liked to read at breakfast.