'You must not praise her, or she will make her escape,' laughed Mildred, with a glance at Olive's averted face; 'we have overwhelmed her already with the bitter-sweet of home criticism, and by and by she will have to run the gauntlet of severer, and it may be adverse, reviews.'
'Then she will learn to prize our appreciation. Olive, I am humiliated when I think how utterly I have misunderstood you.'
'Why?' asked Olive, shyly, raising those fathomless dark eyes of hers to Ethel's agitated face.
'I have always looked upon you as a gloomy visionary who held impossible standards of right and wrong, and who vexed herself and others by troublesome scruples; but I see now that Mildred was right.'
'Aunt Mildred always believes the best of every one,' interrupted Olive, softly.
She was flattered and yet pleased by Ethel's evident agitation—why would they all think so much of her? What had she done? The feelings had always been there—the great aching of unexpressed thoughts; and now a voice had been given her with which to speak them. It was all so simple to Olive, so sacred, so beautiful. Why would they spoil it with all this talk?
'Well, perhaps I had better not finish my sentence,' went on Ethel, with a sigh; after all, it was a pity to mar that unconscious simplicity—Olive would never see herself as others saw her; no fatal egotism wrapped her round. She turned to Mildred with a little movement of fondness as she dropped Olive's hand, and they all turned back into the house.
'If I have nothing else, I have you,' she whispered, with a thrill of mingled envy and grief that went to Mildred's heart.
The music and the conversation stopped as the door opened on the dazzling apparition in the full light. Ethel looked pale, and there was a heavy look round her eyes as though of unshed tears; her manner, too, was subdued.
People said that Ethel Trelawny had changed greatly during the last few years; the old extravagance and daring that had won such adverse criticism had wholly gone. Ethel no longer scandalised and repelled people; her vivacity was tempered with reserve now. A heavy cloud of oppression, almost of melancholy, had quenched the dreamy egotism that had led her to a one-sided view of things; still quaint and original, she was beginning to learn the elastic measurement of a charity that should embrace a fairer proportion of her fellow-creatures.