u have felt have
been to me as my own. I have tried to show you what you were to me, and
I have failed, but you cannot help but understand me, when I say that I
love you, Olive."

She did not take her eyes from a distant hill-top, where their glance
had rested, neither did she blush or look pleased when he finished, but
was as silent for a moment as though studying on what he had said; then
looked at him slowly:

"You surely do not mean it?"

"I surely do mean it, and have tried to make you see and know it, for
weeks past, but your answer now is only what I had expected, for though
I at first thought your indifference feigned, I soon came to see that
neither I, nor any other man had ever received a thought from you, and
to fear that I never would. You seemed wedded to your love of art, but
now, when you know that I love you, cannot you find a little feeling
somewhere in your heart for me, Olive?"

"No, I cannot," answered Olive, after a moment, and with the air of one
who had been literally hunting for something, and failed to find it. "I
could not help but think a great deal of you, when you made my visit so
pleasant, and then was so kind when trouble came; but I never dreamed
that you loved me; I really think you must be mistaken, it seems so
strange. Why do you?"

There was no misunderstanding the honest wonder in her eyes, as she
asked the question, and no possibility of construing it into a desire
for flattery.

"I have loved you," he said, "ever since that first sad night, so long
ago, when you showed a womanly strength--"

"What night?" she asked eagerly, the old vague remembrance coming back
to her; and, at the interruption, he looked at her in amaze.

"Is it possible you do not remember?" he asked.

"No, I do not; but the moment I saw you, there seemed a remembrance that
has worried me ever since. What is it?"

For a moment he hesitated to tell her.

"It was I, who brought your father home," he said, at last; and with a
swift, painful recollection, she dropped her face into her hands, and
said nothing.

"When you came to the Hall," he went on presently, "and was introduced
to me, there was such an air of surprise, together with a look of pain
in your face, that I immediately supposed you remembered me, and that
the memory was painful, so I never spoke of it. I was travelling here in
New York, and was on the train just a few seats behind your father. I
saw him when he received the blow on the tem