CHAPTER XXXVIII.
“No letters to-day from Harbury!” observed Mrs. Mora, as, some weeks after Olive's arrival, they were taking their usual morning airing along the Queen's Drive. “My dear, are you not wearying for news from home?”
“Aunt Flora's house has grown quite home-like to me,” said Olive, affectionately. It was true. She had sunk down, nestling into its peace like a tired broken-winged dove. As she sat beside the old lady, and drank in the delicious breezes that swept across from the Lothians, she was quite another creature from the pale drooping Olive Rothesay who had crept wearily up Harbury Hill. Still, the mention of the place even now took a little of the faint roses from her cheek.
“I am glad you are happy, my dear niece,” answered Mrs. Flora; “yet others should not forget you.”
“They do not. Christal writes now and then from Brighton, and Lyle Derwent indulges me with a long letter every week,” said Olive, trying to smile. She did not mention Harold. She had hardly expected him to write; yet his silence grieved her. It felt like a mist of cold estrangement rising up between them. Yet—as sometimes she tried to think—perhaps it was best so!
“Alison Gwynne was aye the worst of all correspondents,” pursued the old lady, “but Harold might write to you: I think he did so once or twice when he was living with me here, this summer.”
“Yes;” said Olive, “we have always been good friends.”
“I know that. It was not little that we talked about you. He told me all that happened long ago between your father and himself. Ah, that was a strange, strange thing!”
“We have never once spoken of it—neither I nor Mr. Gwynne.”
“Harold could not. He was sair grieved, and bitterly he repented having 'robbed' you. But he was no the same man then that he is now. Ah, that gay young wife of his—fair and fause, fair and fause! It's ill for a man that loves such a woman. I would like well to see my dear Harold wed to some leal-hearted lassie. But I fear me it will never be.”