CHAPTER XLII.
Rivetted by an inexplicable influence, Olive had read the letter through, without once pausing or blenching;—read it as though it had been some strange romance of misery, not relating to herself at all. She felt unable to comprehend or realise it, until she came to the name—“Christal.” Then the whole truth burst upon her, wrapping her round with a cold horror, and, for the time, paralysing all her faculties. When she awoke, the letter was still in her hand, and from it still there stood out clear the name, which had long been a familiar word. Therefore, all this while, destiny had been leading her to work out her father's desire. The girl who had dwelt in her household for months, whom she had tried to love, and generously sought to guide, was—her sister.
But what a chaos of horror was revealed by this discovery! Olive's first thought was of her mother, who had showered kindness on this child of shame; who, dying, had unconsciously charged her to “take care of Christal.”
With a natural revulsion of feeling, Olive thrust the letter from her. Its touch seemed to pollute her fingers.
“Oh, my mother—my poor, wronged mother!—well for you that you never lived to see this day. You—so good, so loving, so faithfully remembering him even to the last. But I—I have lived to shrink with abhorrence from the memory of my own father.”
Suddenly she stopped, aghast at thinking that she was thus speaking of the dead—the dead from whom her own life had sprung.
“I am bewildered,” she murmured. “Heaven help me! I know not what I say or do.” And Olive fell on her knees.
She had no words to pray with; but, in such time of agony, all her thoughts were prayers. After a while these calmed her, and made her strong to endure one more trial—different from, perhaps even more awful than, all the rest.
Much sorrow had been her life's portion; but never until this hour had Olive Rothesay stood face to face with crime. She had now to learn the crowning lesson of virtue—how to deal with vice. Not by turning away in saintly pride, but by boldly confronting it, with an eye stern in purity, yet melting in compassion; remembering ever—