and, hurrying in, she said, impulsively,—
“O child, I wish you had a mother!”
Gladys looked up, unstartled from the calm in which she dwelt. Olivia’s face explained her words, and she answered them with the only reproach much pain had wrung from her,—
“You might have been one to me.”
“It is not too late! What shall I do to prove my sincerity?” cried Olivia, stricken with remorse.
“Help me to give my little child an honest father.”
“I will! show me how.”
Then these two women spent a memorable hour together; for the new tie of motherhood bridged across all differences of age and character, made confession easy, confidence sweet, friendship possible. Yet, after all, Gladys was the comforter, Olivia the one who poured out her heart, and found relief in telling the sorrows that had been, the temptations that still beset her, the good that yet remained to answer, when the right chord was touched. She longed to give as much as she received; but when she had owned, with a new sense of shame, that she was merely playing with Canaris for her own amusement (being true to Helwyze even in her falsehood), there seemed no more for her to do, since Gladys asked but one other question, and that she could not answer.
“If he does not love you, and, perhaps, it is as you say,—only a poet’s admiration for beauty,—what is the trouble that keeps us apart? At first I was too blindly happy to perceive it; now tears have cleared my eyes, and I see that he hides something from me,—something which he longs, yet dares not tell.”
“I know: I saw it long ago; but Jasper alone can tell that secret. He holds Felix by it, and I fear the knowledge would be worse than the suspicion. Let it be: time sets all things right, and it is ill thwarting my poor cousin. I have a charming plan for you and Felix; and, when you have him to yourself, you may be able to win his confidence, as, I am sure, you have already won his heart.”