CHAPTER XL.
Olive and Harold parted at Mrs. Flora's gate. He had business in town, he said, but would return to dinner. So he walked quickly away, and Olive went in and crept upstairs. There, she bolted her door, groped her way to the bed, and lay down. Life and strength, hope and love, seemed to have ebbed from her at once. She felt no power or desire to weep. Once or twice, she caught herself murmuring, half aloud,
“It is all over—quite over. There can be no doubt now.”
And then she knew, by this utter death of hope, that it must have lived once—a feeble, half-unconscious life, but life it was. Despite her reason, and the settled conviction to which she had tutored herself, she must have had some faint thought that Harold loved her. Now, this dream gone, she might perhaps rise, as a soul rises from the death of the body, into a new existence. But of that she could not yet think. She only lay, motionless as a corpse, with hands folded, and eyes firmly closed. Sometimes, with a strange wandering of fancy, she seemed to see herself thus, looking down, as a spirit might do upon its own olden self, with a vague compassion. Once she even muttered, in a sort of childish way,
“Poor little Olive! Poor, crushed, broken thing!”
Thus she lay for many hours, sometimes passing into what was either a swoon or a sleep. At last she roused herself, and saw by the shadows that it was quite late in the day. There is great mournfulness in waking thus of one's own accord, and alone; hearing the various noises of the busy mid-day household, and feeling as if all would go on just the same without thought of us, even if we had died in that weary sleep.
Olive wished she had!—that is, had Heaven willed it. She could so easily have crept out of the bitter world, and no one would have missed her. Still, if it must be, she would try once more to lift her burden, and pursue her way.
There was a little comfort for her the minute she went downstairs. Entering the drawing-room, she met Mrs. Flora's brightest smile.
“My dear lassie, welcome! Have you been sleeping after your weary walk this morning?”