“Thank you for remembering my likings;” and Olive put the flowers in her bosom. She fancied he looked pleased; and suddenly she remembered the meaning given to the flower, “I love you!” At the thought, she began to tremble all over, though contemning her own folly the while. Even had the words been true, she and Harold were both too old for such sentimentalities.
They breakfasted alone. Harold still looked pale and weary, nor did he deny the fact that he had scarcely slept. He told her all the Harbury news, but spoke little of himself or of his plans. “They were yet uncertain,” he said, “but a few more days would decide all.” And then he remained silent until, a little time after, they were standing together at the window. From thence it was a pleasant view. Close beneath, a little fountain rose in slender diamond threads, and fell again with a soft trickling, like a Naiad's sigh. Bees were humming over the richest of autumn flower-gardens, which sloped down, terrace after terrace, until its boundary was hid in the little valley below. Beyond—looking in the clear September air so close that you could almost see the purple of the heather—lay the Braid Hills, a horizon-line soft as that which enclosed the Happy Valley of Prince Rasselas.
Harold stood and gazed.
“How beautiful and calm this is! It looks like a quiet nest—a home for a man's tired heart and brain. Tell me, friend, do you think one could ever find such in this world?”
“A home!” she repeated, somewhat confusedly, for his voice had startled her.—“You have often said that man needed none; that his life was in himself—the life of intellect and of power. It is only we women who have a longing after rest and home.”
Harold made no immediate reply; but after a while he said,
“I want to have a quiet talk with you, Miss Rothesay. And I long to see once more my favourite haunt, the Hermitage of Braid. 'Tis a sweet place, and we can walk and converse there at our leisure. You will come?”
She rarely said him nay in anything, and he somehow unconsciously used a tone of command, like an elder brother;—but there was such sweetness in being ruled by him! Olive obeyed at once; and soon, for the thousandth time, she and Harold were walking out together arm-in-arm.
If ever there was a “lover's walk,” it is that which winds along the burn-side in the Hermitage of Braid. On either side
The braes ascend like lofty wa's,