“A pretty house, if any one came to see us in it, my dear; but nobody does. And then we miss the close carriage so much. To think that I have been obliged to refuse the Stantons' ball and the dinner-party at Everingham. How dull these long winter evenings will be, Olive!”
Olive answered neither yes nor no, but tried quietly, by her actions, to disprove the fact She was but a child—scarcely would have been called a clever child; was neither talkative nor musical; and yet she had a thousand winning ways of killing time, so sweetly that each minute died, dolphin-like, shedding glorious hues.
A very romantic simile this—one that would never have crossed Olive's innocent brain. She only knew that she loved her mother; and therefore tried to amuse and make her happy, so that she might not feel the change of circumstances—a change so unimportant to Olive, so vital to Mrs. Rothesay.
Olive, this night, was peculiarly successful in her little ruse of love. Her mother listened while she explained a whole sketch-book of designs, illustrative of half-a-dozen modern poets. Mrs. Rothesay even asked her to read some of the said poets aloud; and though not of an imaginative temperament, was fain to shed a few womanly tears over Tennyson's “Queen of the May” and the “Miller's Daughter.” Finally, she was coaxed into sitting to her daughter for her portrait, which Olive thought would make a design exactly suited to the heroine of the latter poem, and chiefly at the verse—
“Look through mine eyes with thine. True wife, Round my true heart thine arms entwine; My other dearer life in life, Look through my very soul with thine.”
And, reading the verses over and over again, to bring the proper expression to her mother's face, the young girl marvelled that they brought likewise a look so sad that she would fain have made some excuse, and terminated the sitting.
“No, no, my dear; it amuses me, and I can talk with you the while.”
But Mrs. Rothesay did not talk much; she was continually falling into a reverie. Once she broke it with the words—
“Olive, my child, I think, now we lead a quieter life, your papa will stay at home more. He seems to like this house, too—he never liked Merivale.”
“Dear old Merivale!” said Olive, with a sigh. It seemed ages since she had left the familiar place.