Thus the old lady's talk gently wandered on. Olive listened in silence, her eyes vacantly turned towards the wide open country that sweeps down from Duddingston Loch. The yellow harvest-clad valley smiled; but beneath the same bright sky the loch lay quiet, dark, and still. The sunshine passed over it, and entered it not. Olive wistfully regarded the scene, which seemed a symbol of her own fate. She did not murmur at it, for day by day her peace was returning. She tried to respond with cheerfulness to the new affections that greeted her on every side; to fill each day with those duties, that by the alchemy of a pious nature are so often transmuted into pleasures. She was already beginning to learn the blessed and heaven-sent truth, that no life ought to be wrecked for the love of one human being, and that no sinless sorrow is altogether incurable.
The rest of the drive was rather dull, for Mrs. Flora, usually the most talkative, cheerful old lady in the world, seemed disposed to be silent and thoughtful. Not sad—sadness rarely comes to old age. All strong feelings, whether of joy or pain, belong to youth alone.
“Ye will ride with Marion M'Gillivray the day?” said Mrs. Flora, after a somewhat protracted silence. “You bairns will not want an auld wifie like me.”
Olive disclaimed this, affirming, and with her whole heart, that she was never so happy as when with her good Aunt Flora.
“'Tis pleasant to hear ye say the like of that. But it must be even so—for this night I would fain bide alone at home.”
The carriage stopped in Abercromby Place.
“I will see ye again the morn,” the old lady observed, as her niece descended. And then, after looking up pleasantly to the window, that was filled with a whole host of juvenile M'Gillivrays vehemently nodding and smiling, Aunt Flora pulled down her veil and drove away.
“I thought you would be given up to us for to-day,” said Marion, as she and Olive, now grown almost into friends, strolled out arm-in-arm along the shady walks of Morning-side.
“Indeed! Did Aunt Flora say”——
“She said nothing—she never does. But for years I have noticed this 20th of September; because, when she lived with us, on this day, after teaching us in the morning, she used to go to her own room, or take a long, lonely walk,—come back very pale and quiet, and we never saw her again that night. It was the only day in the year that she seemed wishful to keep away from us. Afterwards, when I grew a woman, I found out why this was.”