“Men cannot do without love, and having once been married, Harold's necessity for a good wife's sympathy and affection is the greater. I always expected that my son would marry again, and therefore I have eagerly watched every young woman whom he might meet in society, and be disposed to choose. All men, especially clergymen, are better married—at least in my opinion. Even you, yourself, as Harold's friend, his most valued friend, must acknowledge that he would be much happier with a second wife.”
What was there in this frank speech that smote Olive with a secret pain? Was it the unconscious distinction drawn between her and all other women on whom Harold might look with admiring eyes, so that his mother, while calling her his friend, never dreamed of her being anything more?
Olive knew not whence came the pain, yet still she felt it was there. “Certainly he would,” she answered, speaking in a slow, quiet tone. “Nevertheless, I should scarcely think Christal a girl whom Mr. Gwynne would be likely to select.”
“Nor I. At first, deeming her something like the first Mrs. Harold, I had my doubts; but they quickly vanished. My son will never marry Christal Manners.”
Olive, sitting at the window, looked up. It seemed to her as if over the room had come a lightness like the passing away of a cloud.
“Nor, at present,” pursued Mrs. Gwynne, “does it appear to me likely that he will marry at all. I fear that domestic love—the strong, yet quiet tenderness of a husband to a wife, is not in his nature. Passion is, or was, in his youth; but he is not young now. In his first hasty marriage I knew that the fire would soon burn itself out—it has left nothing but ashes. Once he deceived himself, and sorely he has reaped the fruits of his folly. The result is, that he will live to old age without ever having known the blessing of true love.”
“Is that so mournful, then?” said Olive, more as if thinking aloud than speaking.
Mrs. Gwynne did not hear the words, for she had started up at the sound of a horse's hoofs at the gate. “If that should be Harold! He said he would be at home this week or next. It is—it is he! How glad I am—that is, I am glad that he should be in time to see the Fludyers and Miss Manners before their journey to-morrow.”
Thus, from long habit, trying to make excuses for her overflowing tenderness, she hurried out. Olive heard Mr. Gwynne's voice in the Hall, his anxious tender inquiry for his mother; even the quick, flying step of little Ailie bounding to meet “papa.”
She paused: her work fell, and a mist came over her eyes. She felt then, as she had sometimes done before, though never so strongly, that it was hard to be in the world alone.