“Now, my Harold!” she said, when, all trace of emotion having passed from either, she sat quietly by her son's side. “Now I understand all. Olive is right; with your love of action, and a spirit that would perhaps find a limitation in the best forms of belief, you never can be again a minister of the English Church. We must not think of it any more.”
“But, mother, how shall we live? That is what tortures me! Whither shall we turn if we go from Harbury? Alone, I could bear anything, but you”——
“No matter for me! My Harold,” she added, a little moved, “if you had trusted me, and told me your sufferings at any time all these years,—I would have given up everything here, and lived, as I once did, when you were a youth at college. It was not hard then, nor would it have been now. O my son, you did not half know your mother!”
He looked at her, and slowly, slowly there rose in his eyes—those clear, proud, manly eyes!—two great crystal tears. He was not ashamed of them; he let them gather and fall. And Olive loved him dearer, ay, ten thousand times, even though these tears—the first and last she ever beheld him shed—were given not to her, but to his mother.
Mrs. Gwynne resumed.
“Let us think what we must do; for we have no time to lose. As soon as you are quite strong, you must give up the curacy, and we will leave Harbury.”
“Leave Harbury! your dear old home, from which you have often said you could never part! Oh, mother, mother!”
“It is nothing—do not think of it, my son! Afterwards, what must you do?”
“I cannot tell. Olive, think for me!” said Harold, looking helplessly towards her.
Olive advised—timidly at first, but growing firmer as she proceeded—that he should carry out his old plan of going to America. They talked over the project for a long time, until it grew matured. Ere the afternoon closed, it was finally decided on—at least, so far as Harold's yet doubtful health permitted.