Then, the turf she knelt on covered Sara! the kiss, yet warm on her lips, was given by Sara's child! Olive bowed her face in the grass, trembling violently. Far, far through long-divided years, her heart fled back to its olden tenderness. She saw again the thorn-tree and the garden-walk, the beautiful girlish face, with its frank and constant smile. She sat down and wept over Sara's grave.
Then she thought of little Ailie. Oh! would that she had known this sooner! that she might have closer clasped the motherless child, and have seen poor Sara's likeness shining from her daughter's eyes! With a yearning impulse Olive rose up to follow the little girl. But she remembered the father.
How strange--how passing strange, that he with whom she had been talking, towards whom she had felt such an awe, and yet a vague attraction, should have been Sara's husband, and the man whose influence had curiously threaded her own life for many years.
She felt glad that the mystery was now solved--that she had at last seen Harold Gwynne.
Miss Rothesay was very silent during the walk home. She accounted for it to Christal by telling the simple truth--that in the churchyard she had found the grave of an early and dear friend. Her young companion looked serious, condoled in set fashion; and then became absorbed in the hateful labyrinths of the muddy road. Certainly, Miss Manners was never born for a simple rustic. Olive could not help remarking this.
“No; I was born for what I am,” answered the girl, proudly. “My parents were aristocrats; so am I. Don't lecture me! Wrong or right, I always felt thus, and always shall. If I have neither friends nor relatives, I have at least my family and my name.”
She talked thus, as she did sometimes, until they came to the garden-gate of Farnwood Dell. There stood an elegant carriage. Christars eyes brightened at the sight, and she trod with a more patrician air.
The maid--a parting bequest of Miss Meliora's, and who had long and faithfully served at Woodford Cottage--came anxiously to communicate that there were two ladies waiting. One of them she did not know; the other was Mrs. Fludyer. “The latter would have disturbed Mrs. Rothesay,” Hannah added, “but the other lady said, 'No; they would wait.'” Whereat Olive's heart inclined towards “the other lady.”