“Not your mother, who loves you so?”
“No, because her love would be sorely tried. We should be strangers in a strange land; perhaps poverty would be added to our endurance; I should have to labour unceasingly, and my temper might fail. These are hard things for a woman to bear.”
“You do not know what a woman's affection is!” said Olive earnestly. “How could she be desolate when she had you with her! Little would she care for being poor! And if, when sorely tried, you were bitter at times, the more need for her to soothe you. We can bear all things for those we love.”
“Is it so?” Harold said, thoughtfully, his countenance changing, and his voice becoming soft as he looked upon her. “Do you think that any woman—I mean my mother, of course—would love me with this love?”
And once more Olive taught herself to answer calmly, “I do think so.”
Again there was a silence. Harold broke it by saying, “You would smile to know how childishly my last walk here haunts me; I really must go and see that love-stricken friend of mine. But you, I suppose, take no interest in his wooing?”
“O yes! I like to hear of young people's happiness.”
“But he was not quite happy. He did not know whether the woman he loved loved him. He had never asked her the question.”
“Why not?”
“There were several reasons. First, because he was a proud man, and, like many others, had been deceived once. He would not again let a girl mock his peace. And he was right. Do you not think so?”