“My poor child,” she said, “do you not know who is God?—has no one told you?”
“No one.”
“Then I will.”
“Pardon me, madam,” said a man's voice behind, calm, cold, but not unmusical; “but it seems to me that a father is the best teacher of his child's faith.”
“Papa—it is papa.” With a look of shyness almost amounting to fear, the child slid from the tombstone and ran away.
Olive stood face to face with the father.
He was a gentleman—a true gentleman; at the first glance any one would have given him that honourable and rarely-earned name. His age might be about thirty-five, but his face was cast in the firm rigid mould over which years pass and leave no trace. He might have looked as old as now at twenty; at fifty he would probably look little older. Handsome he was, as Olive discerned at a glance, but there was something in him that controlled her much more than mere beauty would have done. It was a grave dignity of presence, which indicated that mental sway which some men are born to hold, first over themselves, and then over their kind. Wherever he came, he seemed to say, “I rule—I am master here!”
Olive Rothesay, innocent as she was of any harm to this gentleman or to his child, felt as cowed and humbled as if she had done wrong. She wished she could have fled like the little girl—fled out of reach of his searching glance.
He waited for her to speak first, but she was silent; her colour rose to her very temples; she knew not whether she ought to apologise, or to summon her woman's dignity and meet the stranger with a demeanour like his own.
She was relieved when the sound of his voice broke the pause.