While thinking thus, Olive was sitting in her “bower.” It was a garden-seat, placed under the thorn-tree, and shut out from sight of the house by an espalier of apple-trees. Not very romantic, certainly, but a most pleasant spot, with the sound of the “shallow river” gliding by, and of many a bird that “sang madrigals” in the meadows opposite. And Olive herself, as she sat with her hands crossed on her knee, her bending head and pensive eyes out-gazing, added no little to the scene. Many a beauty might have coveted the meek yet heavenly look which threw sweetness over the pale features of the deformed girl.
Olive, sitting with her eyes cast down, was some time before she became conscious that she was watched—long and earnestly, but by an innocent watcher—her “little knight” as he had dubbed himself, Lyle Derwent. His face looked out from the ivy-leaves at the top of the wall. Soon he had leaped down, and was kneeling at her feet, just like a young lover in a romance. Smiling, she told him so; for in truth she made a great pet of the child, whose delicate beauty pleased her artist-eye, while his gentleness won her affection.
“Well, and I will be your lover, Miss Olive,” said he, stoutly; “for I love you very much indeed. I should so like to kiss you—may I?”
She stooped down; moved almost to tears.
“Why are you always so sad? why do you never laugh, like Sara or the other young ladies we know?”
“Because I am not like Sara, or like any other girl. Ah! Lyle, all is very different with me. But, my little knight, this can scarcely be understood by one so young as you.”
“Though I am a little boy, I know thus much, that I love you, and think you more beautiful than anybody else in the world.”
And speaking rather loudly and energetically, he was answered by a burst of derisive laughter from behind the wall.
Olive crimsoned; it was one more of those passing wounds which her sensitive nature now continually received. Was even a child's love for her deemed so unnatural, and that it should be mocked at thus cruelly? Lyle, with a quickness beyond his years, seemed to have divined her thoughts, and his gentle temper was roused into passion.
“I will kill Bob, I will! Never mind him, sweet, dear, beautiful Miss Rothesay; I love you, and I hate him.”