As their conversation grew more familiar, Olive was rather disappointed in Lyle. In his boyhood, she had thought him quite a little genius; but the bud had given more promise than the flower was ever likely to fulfil. Now she saw in him one of those not uncommon characters, who with sensitive feeling, and some graceful talent, yet never rise to the standard of genius. Strength, daring, and, above all, originality were wanting in his mind. With all his dreamy sentiment—his lip-library of perpetually quoted poets—and his own numberless scribblings (of which he took care to inform Miss Rothesay)—Lyle Der-went would probably remain to his life's end a mere “poetical gentleman.”
Olive soon divined all this, and she began to weary a little of her companion and his vague sentimentalities, “in linked sweetness long drawn out.” Besides, thoughts much deeper had haunted her at times, during the evening—thoughts of the marriage which had been “not quite happy.” This fact scarcely surprised her. The more she began to know of Mr. Gwynne—and she had seen a great deal of him, considering the few weeks of their acquaintance—the more she marvelled that he had ever chosen Sara Derwent for his wife. Their union must have been like that of night and day, fierce fire and unstable water. Olive longed to fathom the mystery, and could not resist saying.
“You were talking of your sister a-while ago. I stopped you, for I saw it pained mamma. But now I should so like to hear something about my poor Sara.”
“I can tell you little, for I was a boy when she died. But things I then little noticed, I put together afterwards. It must have been quite a romance, I think. You know my sister had a former lover—Charles Geddes. Do you remember him?”
“I do—well!” and Olive sighed—perhaps over the remembrance of the dream born in that fairy time—her first girlish dream of ideal love.
“He was at sea when Sara married. On his return the news almost drove him wild. I remember his coming in the garden—our old garden, you know—where he and Sara used to walk. He seemed half mad, and I went to him, and comforted him as well as I could, though little I understood his grief. Perhaps I should now!” said Lyle, lifting his eyes with rather a doleful, sentimental air; which, alas! was all lost upon his companion.
“Poor Charles!” she murmured. “But tell me more.”
“He persuaded me to take back all her letters, together with one from himself, and give them to my sister the next time I went to Harbury. I did so. Well I remember that night! Harold came in, and found his wife crying over the letters. In a fit of jealousy he took them and read them all through—together with that of Charles. He did not see me, or know the part I had in the matter, but I shall never forget him.”
“What did he do?” asked Olive, eagerly. Strange that her question and her thoughts were not of Sara, but of Harold.
“Do? nothing! But his words—I remember them distinctly, they were so freezing, so stern. He grasped her arm, and said, 'Sara, when you said you loved me, you uttered a lie! When you took your marriage oath, you vowed a lie! Every day since, that you have smiled in my face, you have looked a lie! Henceforth I will never trust you—or any woman. '”