“Stop!” said Olive.
“I won’t!” said Miss Torrance. “I pretended to myself that I wanted to save you, but to-day, when I saw you with that man, I knew that I was nothing but a jealous, meddlesome old—”
Suddenly they were in each other’s arms, clinging to each other and weeping.
“Of course I’m going with you!” said Olive. “You might have known!”
V
It was nothing—nothing at all—for Olive to give up the hope of seeing Mr. Martin again. Twice only had her eyes rested upon his jolly, sunburned face, and it ought to have been very easy to forget that. His letters she had never seen, so they were surely nothing to think about. Altogether, he and his letters were only the briefest sort of episode in a life that might go on for thirty, forty, even fifty years longer.
She had so much to be thankful for—a good position, a comfortable home, and the immeasurable gratitude and devotion of her friend. Well, to be sure, she was as quietly good-tempered as usual, and gave no sign that she had not forgotten the whole thing; yet Miss Torrance knew that Olive hadn’t forgotten.
She could read it in the girl’s face, and she could read it in her own heart. She could understand how Olive felt about her lost Mr. Martin. She understood very well what it was to remember one face, one voice, so constantly that all others were a weariness.
“It really is like that!” she sometimes said to herself, with a sort of awe. “I didn’t believe it, but it’s true!”
She never spoke about this to Olive, nor did she think it necessary to tell her that a week after they left the boarding house[Pg 190] she had returned there, to see Mr. Robertson, and to get from him the address of the roving Mr. Martin. Mr. Robertson had gone away, the landlady didn’t know where, so Miss Torrance was spared that humiliation, and had no inclination to mention it. She had done away with the young man so effectively that now, when she would have given her right hand to get him back for Olive, she couldn’t find him.