He held her at arm's-length and looked at her wistfully in the wet wan face and saw his wife Christina there. “By heaven!” he thought, “it is no wonder that this man should hunt her.”
“You have made me happy this day, Olivia,” said he; “at least half happy. I dare not mention what more was needed to make me quite content.”
“You need not,” said she. “I know, and that—and that—is over too. I am just your own Olivia.”
“What!” he cried elate; “no more?”
“No more at all.”
“Now praise God!” said he. “I have been robbed of Credit and estate, and even of my name; I have seen king and country foully done by, and black affront brought on our people, and still there's something left to live for.”
CHAPTER XXVI — THE DUKE'S BALL
For some days Count Victor chafed at the dull and somewhat squalid life of the inn. He found himself regarded coldly among strangers; the flageolet sounded no longer in the private parlour; the Chamberlain stayed away. And if Drimdarroch had seemed ill to find from Doom, he was absolutely indiscoverable here. Perhaps there was less eagerness in the search because other affairs would for ever intrude—not the Cause (that now, to tell the truth, he somehow regarded moribund; little wonder after eight years' inaction!) nor the poignant home-thoughts that made his ride through Scotland melancholy, but affairs more recent, and Olivia's eyes possessed him.
A morning had come of terrific snow, and made all the colder, too, his sojourn in the country of MacCailen Mor. Now he looked upon mountains white and far, phantom valleys gulping chilly winds, the sea alone with some of its familiar aspect, yet it, too, leaden to eye and heart as it lay in a perpetual haze between the headlands and lazily rose and fell in the bays.