He stopped, thinking she would have replied; but she was silent. Her silence seemed to grow over him like a cloud. When the lights came in, he looked the same proud, impassive Harold Gwynne, as in the old time. Already his clasp had melted from Olive's hand. Before she could guess the reason why, she found him speaking, and she answering coldly, indifferently. All the sweetness of that sweet hour had with it passed away.
This sudden change so pained her, that very soon she began to talk of returning home. Harold rose to accompany her, but he did so with the formal speech of necessary courtesy—“Allow me the pleasure, Miss Rothesay.” It stung her to the heart.
“Indeed, you need not, when you are already tired. It is still early. I had much rather go home alone.”
Harold sat down again at once.
She prepared to depart. She shook hands with his mother, and then with himself, saying in a voice that, lest it should tremble, she made very low, quiet, and cold, how glad she was that he had come home safe. However, before she reached the garden gate, Harold followed her.
“Excuse me, but my mother is not easy for you to set off thus; and we may as well return to our old custom of walking home together—just once more.”
What could he mean? Olive would have asked him, but she dared not. Even yet there was a veil between their hearts. Would it ever be drawn aside?
There were few words spoken on the way to Farnwood, and those few were of ordinary things. Once Olive talked of Michael Vanbrugh and his misfortunes.
“You call him unfortunate; how know you that?” said Harold, quickly. “He needed no human affection, and so, on its loss, suffered no pain; he had no desire save for fame; his pride was never humbled to find himself dependent on mere love. The old painter was a great and a happy man.”
“Great he was, but not happy. I think I had rather be the poor little sister who spent her life for him.”