After he finished speaking, they rode in silence for a long way, and the peaceful old horse, finding himself unguided, turned his head homeward, and jogged off more lively. Olive did not look up again. She was evidently lost in sad memories, that his words awakened, and he had not the heart to bring her back to a subject so foreign to her thoughts as his love. So in silence, they reached home, and, as he helped her from the buggy, Olive said with trembling lips:
"I'm glad it was you. I loved papa better than any one in the world, and I can never forget that you saw him last and tried to help him." Then, after telling her mother and the girls their additional cause for gratitude to him, she went off to her room, and was not seen again for some time; for when affected so that tears were her only relief, she always took them alone.
Roger went that night. He spent the afternoon sitting in Ernestine's room with them all, and telling over and over the last moments of Mr. Dering, what he had overheard him saying to another passenger just a few moments before the accident; just how the blow came, so quick and painless, and how his last words had been of home, and how they would be surprised at his sudden departure.
Olive was not present, and fearing that Roger might consider it rude, Mrs. Dering explained the little habit of taking all her grief alone, and how the reminding of that sad night had doubtless overcome her. But Olive came down just before supper, and her face showed plainer than ever before, its traces of heavy tears, though she said nothing about it, and seemed to think her absence explained itself to the only one to whom an explanation was due.
While the girls were busy in the kitchen, and mother was with Ernestine, they were alone in the sitting-room, and Roger said to her, as they stood by the window, watching the shadows creep through the yard, and lift themselves in a misty cloud:
"Olive, have you no other answer for me, before I go?"
"No," said Olive, slowly. "You seem so different to me. In one way, I love you; I could not help it; and, in another way, you are nothing to me. I wish you would forget that you ever thought you loved me, and let me feel as though you were my brother."
"I cannot," he answered. "I do not think that I love you, but I know that I do, and that I always will; and some time, when you are older, and come to feel that home-love and art cannot satisfy you, I will come back and try to win a place in the new yearning."
"You needn't," said Olive, with discouraging honesty. "I shall never love any one that way. I don't want to. All I want is mama and the girls, and to study until I am satisfied with myself, or as near it as I can be. But you mustn't let that keep you away; you will forget this, indeed, you will, and must come and see us often, and then everything will be delightful."
"No; I shall never come until I feel that I do not come in vain. Do not doubt my love, Olive, because your own heart is so free from it. It is a girlish heart, and when it reaches womanhood, I may not be the one to satisfy it, but I will come and try."