“No, no!” cried Angus, warmly. He looked at her as she sat by the light of her own hearth—life's trials conquered—life's duties fulfilled—and she appeared not less divine a creature than the Alison Balfour who had trod the mountains full of joy, and hope, and energy. Holy and beautiful she had seemed to him in her youth; and though every relic of that passionate idealisation he once called love, was gone, still holy and beautiful she seemed to him in her age.
Angus Rothesay rode away from Harbury parsonage, feeling that there he had gained a new interest to make life and life's duties more sacred. He thought with tenderness of his home—of his wife, and of his “little Olive;” and then, travelling by a rather circuitous route, his thoughts rested on Harold Gwynne.
“The kind-hearted, generous fellow! I will take care he is requited double. And to-morrow, before even I reach Oldchurch, I will go to my lawyer's and make all safe on his account.”
“To-morrow!” He remembered not the warning, “Boast not thyself of to-morrow.”
CHAPTER XVII.
Olive sat mournfully contemplating Sara Derwent's last letter—the last she knew it would be. It was written, not with the frank simplicity of their girlish confidence, but with the formal dignity of one who the next day would become a bride. It spoke of no regret, no remorse for her violated troth; it mentioned her former promise in a cold, business-like manner, without inferring any changed love, but merely stating her friends' opinion on the “evil of long engagements, and that she would be much better married at once to Mr. Gwynne, than waiting some ten years for Charles Geddes.”
But to Olive this change seemed a positive sin. She shuddered to think of Sara's wicked faithlessness; she wept with pity, remembering poor Charles. The sense of wrong, as well as of misery, had entered her world at once; her idols were crumbling into dust. Life grew painful, and a morbid bitterness was settling on her mind.
She read the account that Sara had somewhat boastfully written, of her prospects, her pretty home, and of her lover's devotion to her. “This clever man—this noble man (as people call him, and most of all his mother)—I could wind him round my little finger. What think you, Olive? Is not that something to be married for? You ask if I am happy. Yes, certainly, happier than you can imagine.”
“That is true, indeed,” murmured Olive; and there came upon her a bitter sense of the inequalities of life. It seemed that Heaven to some gave all things; to others, nothing! But she hushed the complainings, for they seemed impious. Upon her was the influence of the faith she had been taught by Elspie, which though in the old Scotswoman it became all the mystic horrors of Calvinism, yet in Olive's gentler and higher nature, had worked out blessing instead of harm. For it was a faith that taught the peace of resting child-like beneath the shadow of that Omnipotent Will, which holds every tangled thread of fate within one mighty Hand, which rules all things, and rules them continually for good.