“Hush! we must be quiet, very quiet. Papa is dangerously ill at B----, and we must start at once. I have arranged all. Come, mamma, dearest!”
There was no time to lose. Olive snatched some restoratives, and then made ready to depart. Mrs. Rothesay, still insensible, was lifted into the carriage. She lay there, for some time, quite motionless, supported in her daughter's arms--to which never had she owed support before. As Olive looked down upon her, strange, new feelings came into the girl's heart. Filial tenderness seemed transmuted into a devotion passing the love of child to mother, and mingled therewith was a sense of protection, of watchful guardianship.
She thought, “What if my father should die, and we two should be left alone in the world! Then she will have none to look to save me, and I will be to her in the stead of all. Once, I think, she loved me very little; but, oh! mother, dearly we love one another now.”
When Mrs. Rothesay's senses returned, she lifted her head, with a bewildered air. “Where are we going? What has happened? I can't think clearly of anything.”
“Dearest mamma, do not try--I will think for us both. Be content; you are quite safe with your own daughter.”
“My daughter--ah! I remember, I fainted, as I did long years ago, when they told me something about my daughter. Are you she--that little child whom I cast from my arms? and now I am lying in yours!” she cried, her mind seeming to wander, as if distraught by this sudden shock.
“Hush, mamma! don't talk; rest quiet here.”
Mrs. Rothesay looked wistfully in her daughter's face, and there seemed to cross her mind some remembered sense of what had befallen. She clung helplessly to those sustaining arms--“Take care of me, Olive!--I do not deserve it, but take care of me!”
“I will, until death!” was Olive's inward vow.
And so, travelling fast, but in solemn silence, they came to B----. Alas! it was already too late! By Angus Rothesay's bed they stood--the widow and the fatherless!
The tomb had scarcely closed over Captain Rothesay, when it was discovered that his affairs were in a state of irretrievable confusion. For months he must have lived with ruin staring him in the face.
His sudden death was then no mystery. The newspaper had startled him with tidings--partly false, as afterwards appeared--of a heavy disaster by sea, and the failure of his latest speculation at home. There seemed lifted against him at once the hand of Heaven and of man. His proud nature could not withstand the shock; shame smote him, and he died.