CHAPTER XLIII
It was mid-winter before the inhabitants of the Dell were visited by their friend, Lyle Derwent, now grown a rich and important personage. Olive rather regretted his apparent neglect, for it grieved her to suspect a change in any one whom she regarded. Christal only mocked the while, at least in outside show. Miss Rothesay did not see with what eagerness the girl listened to every sound, nor how every morning, fair and foul, she would restlessly start to walk up the Harbury road and meet the daily post.
It was during one of these absences of hers that Lyle made his appearance. Olive was sitting in her painting-room, arranging the contents of her desk. She was just musing, for the hundredth time, over her father's letter, considering whether or not she should destroy it, lest any unforeseen chance—her own death, for instance—might bring the awful secret to Christars knowledge. Lyle's entrance startled her, and she hastily thrust the letter within the desk. Consequently her manner was rather fluttered, and her greeting scarcely so cordial as she would have wished it to be. The infection apparently communicated itself to her visitor, for he sat down, looking agitated and uncomfortable.
“You are not angry with me for staying so long away, are you, Miss Rothesay?” said Lyle, when he had received her congratulations on his recent acquisitions. “You don't think this change in fortune will make any change in my heart towards you?”
Olive half smiled at his sentimental way of putting the matter, but it was the young man's peculiarity. So she frankly assured him that she had never doubted his regard towards her. At which poor Lyle fell into ecstasies of delight.
They had a long talk together about his prospects, in all of which Olive took a warm and lively interest. He told her of his new house and grounds; of his plan of life, which seemed very Arcadian and poetical indeed. But he was a simple-minded, warm-hearted youth, and Miss Rothesay listened with pleasure to all he said. It did her good to see that there was a little happiness to be found in the world.
“You have drawn the sweetest possible picture of rural felicity,” she said, smiling; “I earnestly hope you may realise it, my dear Lyle—But I suppose one must not call you so any more, since you are now Mr. Derwent, of Hollywood.”
“Oh, no; call me Lyle, nothing but Lyle. It sounds so sweet from your lips—it always did, even when I was a little boy.”
“I am afraid I have treated you quite like a boy until now. But you must not mind it, for the sake of old times.”
“Do you remember them still?” asked Lyle, a tone of deeper earnestness stealing through his affectations of sentiment. “Do you remember how I was your little knight, and used to say I loved you better than all the world?”