“Oh, Olive! how wretched you make me, to talk thus. Unhappy mother that I am! Why should Heaven have punished me thus?”
“Punished you, mother?”
“Nay, my child—my poor, innocent child! I did not mean that,” cried Mrs. Rothesay, embracing her with a passionate revulsion of feeling.
But the word was said,—to linger for ever after on Olive's mind. It brought back the look once written on her childish memory—grown faint, but never quite erased—her father's first look. She understood it now.
Mrs. Rothesay continued weeping, and Olive had to cast aside all other feelings in the care of soothing her mother. She succeeded at last; but she learnt at the same time that on this one subject there must be silence between them for ever. It seemed, also, to her sensitive nature, as if every tear and every complaining word were a reproach to the mother that bore her. Henceforth her bitter thoughts must be wrestled with alone.
She did so wrestle with them. She walked out into her favourite meadow—now lying in the silent, frost-bound mistiness of a January day. It was where she had often been in summer with Sara, and Charles Geddes, and the little boys. Now everything seemed so wintry and lonely. What if her own future life were so—one long winter-day, wherein was neither beauty, gladness, nor love?
“I am 'deformed.' That was Sara's own word,” murmured Olive to herself. “If this is felt by one who loves me, what must I appear to the world? Will not all shrink from me—and even those who pity, turn away in pain. As for loving me”——
Thinking thus, Olive's fancy began to count, almost in despair, all those whose affection she had ever known. There was Elspie, there were her parents. Yet, the love of both father and mother—how sweet soever now—had not blessed her always. She remembered the time when it was not there.