Harold's mother stood a long time in silence. Heaven only knows what struggle there might have been in her heart—so bound up as it was in him—her only child. Ere it ended—he awoke.
“Mother!—is not that my mother?”
“Yes!” Mrs. Gwynne answered. She went up and kissed them both, first her son, and afterwards Olive. Then, without speaking, she quitted the room, leaving them alone together.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
It was a Sunday afternoon, not bright, but dull. All the long day the low clouds had been dropping freshness down;—the soft May-rain, which falls warm and silent, as if the spring were weeping itself away for very gladness. Through the open window came the faint odour which the earth gives forth during rain—an odour of bursting leaves and dew-covered flowers. On the lawn you could almost “have seen the grass grow.” And though the sky was dull and grey, still the whole air was so full of summer, so rich in the promise of what the next day would be, that you did not marvel to hear the birds singing as merrily as if it had been sunshine. There was one thrush to which Olive had stood listening for half-an-hour. He sat sheltered in the heart of the great syringa bush. Though the rain kept dropping continually from its flowers, he poured out a song so long and merry, that he even disturbed his friends in the parlour—the happy silent three—mother, son, and the son's betrothed.
Mrs. Gwynne, who sat in the far corner, put down her book—the best Book, for Sunday and all other days—the only one she ever read now. Harold, still feeble, lying back in his armchair by the window, listened to the happy bird.
“Do you like to hear it, or shall I close the window?” said Olive, coming towards him.
“Nay, it does me good; everything does me good now,” he answered, smiling. And then he lay a long time, quietly looking on the garden and the misty view beyond. Olive sat, looking alone at him; watching him in that deep peace, that satisfied content with which our eyes drink in every lineament beloved, when, all sorrow past, the fulness of love has come. No need had she to seek his, as though asking restlessly, “Do you love me?” In her own love's completeness she desired no demonstration of his. To her it was perfect joy only to sit near him and to look at his face; the face which, whether seen or remembered, shone distinct from every other face in the wide world; and had done so from the first moment when it met her sight. Very calm and beautiful it was now; so beautiful, that even his mother turned round and looked at him for a moment with dimmed eyes.
“You are sure you feel quite well to-day? I mean as well as usual. You are not sitting up too long, or wearying yourself too much?”