But she always accompanied any painful allusion of this kind by saying how happy she was in being so free, and how fortunate it seemed that there could be nothing to hinder her from following her heart's desire. She was growing as great an optimist as Miss Meliora herself, who—cheerful little soul—was in the seventh heaven of delight whenever she heard her brother acknowledge Olive's progress.
“And don't you see, my dear Miss Rothesay,” she said sometimes, “that everything always turns out for the best; and that if you had not been so unhappy, and I had not come in and found you crying, you might have gone on pining in secret, instead of growing up to be an artist.”
Olive assented, and confessed it was rather strange that out of her chiefest trouble should have arisen her chiefest joy.
“It almost seems,” said she to her mother, laughing, “as if that hard-hearted Mr. Harold Gwynne had held the threads of my destiny, and helped to make me an artist.”
“Don't let us talk about Mr. Gwynne; it is a disagreeable subject, my child,” was Mrs. Rothesay's answer.
Olive did not talk about him, but she thought the more. And—though had he known it, the pelf-despising Mr. Vanbrugh would never have forgiven such a desecration of Art—it was not her lightest spur in the attainment of excellence, to feel that as soon as her pictures were good enough to sell, she might earn money enough to discharge the claim of this harsh creditor, whose very name sent a pang to her heart.
Day by day, as her mind strengthened and her genius developed, Olive's existence seemed to brighten. Her domestic life was full of many dear ties, the chief of which was that devotion, less a sentiment than a passion, which she felt for her mother. Her intellectual fife grew more intense; while she felt the stay and solace of having a fixed pursuit to occupy her whole future. Also, it was good for her to live with the enthusiastic painter and his meek contented little sister; for she learnt thereby, that life might pass not merely in endurance, but in peace, without either of those blessings which in her early romance she deemed the chief of all—beauty and love. There was a greatness and happiness beyond them both.
The lesson was impressed more deeply by a little incident that chanced about this time.
Miss Vanbrugh sometimes took Olive with her on those little errands of charity which were not unfrequent with the gentle Meliora.
“I wish you would come with me to-day,” she said once, “because, to tell the truth, I hardly like to go alone.”