It was scarcely uttered before her heart trembled at its impiety. And then the current of her thoughts changed. Those mysterious yearnings which had haunted her throughout childhood, until they had grown fainter under the influence of earthly ties and pleasures, returned to her now. God's immeasurable Infinite rose before her in glorious serenity. What was one brief lifetime to the ages of eternity? She felt it: she, in her weakness--her untaught childhood--her helplessness--felt that her poor deformed body enshrined a living soul. A soul that could look on Heaven, and on whom Heaven also looked--not like man, with scorn or loathing, but with a Divine tenderness that had power to lift the mortal into communion with the immortal.
Olive Rothesay seemed to have grown years older in that hour of solitary musing. She walked homewards through the silent fields, over which the early night was falling--night coming, as it were, in the midst of day, where the only light was given by the white, cold snow. To Olive this was a symbol, too--a token that the freezing sorrow which had fallen on her path might palely light her on her earthly way. Strange things for a young girl to dream of! But they whom Heaven teaches are sometimes called--Samuel-like--while to them still pertains the childish ephod and the temple-porch.
Passing on, with footsteps silent and solemn as her own heart, Olive came to the street, on the verge of the town, where was her own dwelling and Sara's. From habit she looked in at the Derwents' house. It had all the cheerful brightness given by a blazing fire, glimmering through windows not yet closed. Olive could plainly distinguish the light shining on the crimson wall; even the merry faces of the circle round the hearth. And, as if to chant the chorus of so sweet a scene, there broke out on the clear frosty air the distant carillon of Oldchurch bells--marriage-bells too--signifying that not far off was dawning another scene of love and hope; that, somewhere in the parish, was celebrated the “coming home” of a bride.
The young creature, born with a woman's longings--longings neither unholy nor impure, after the love which is the religion of a woman's heart--the sweetness of home, which is the heaven of a woman's life--felt that from both she was shut out for ever.