“If I might advise, I would say decisively, No! Better leave the matter in my hands. Harold!—'tis a boy's name,” he added, meditatively. “If it were a girl's now—I executed a little commission for Captain Rothesay once.”
“What did you say?” asked Olive, looking up at him with her innocent eyes. He could not meet them; his own fell confused.
“What did I say, Miss Rothesay? Oh, nothing—nothing at all; only that if I had a commission—to—to hunt out this secret.”
“I thank you, Mr. Wyld; but a daughter would not willingly employ any third person to 'hunt out' her father's secret. His papers will doubtless inform me of everything; therefore we will speak no more on this subject.”
“As you will” He gathered up his blue bag and its voluminous contents, and made his adieux.
But Olive had scarcely sat down again, and with her head leaning on her father's desk, had given vent to a sigh of relief, in that she was freed from Mr. Wyld's presence, when the old lawyer again appeared.
“Miss Rothesay, I merely wished to say, if ever you find out—any secret—or need any advice about that paper, or anything else, I'm the man to give it, and with pleasure in this case. Good evening!”
Olive thanked him coldly, somewhat proudly, for what she thought a piece of unnecessary impertinence. However, it quickly passed from her gentle mind; and then, as the best way to soothe all her troubles, she quitted the study, and sought her mother.
Of Mrs. Rothesay's affliction we have as yet said little. Many and various are earth's griefs; but there must be an awful individuality in the stroke which severs the closest human tie, that between two whom marriage had made “one flesh.” And though in this case coldness had loosened the sacred tie, still no power could utterly divide it, while life endured. Angus Rothesay's widow remembered that she had once been the loved and loving bride of his youth. As such, she mourned him; nor was her grief without that keenest sting, the memory of unatoned wrong. From the dim shores of the past, arose ghosts that nothing could ever lay, because death's river ran eternally between.
Sybilla Rothesay was one of those women whom no force of circumstances can ever teach self-dependence or command. She had looked entirely to her husband for guidance and control, and now for both she looked to her child. From the moment of Captain Rothesay's death, Olive seemed to rule in his stead—or rather, the parent and child seemed to change places. Olive watched, guided, and guarded the passive, yielding, sorrow-stricken woman, as with a mother's care; while Mrs. Rothesay trusted implicitly in all things to her daughter's stronger mind, and was never troubled by thinking or acting for herself in any one thing.