'Why not, Livy?' not abruptly, but questioning.
'One is so afraid of saying the wrong things, and then you might not have liked it,' stammering in her old way.
'I must always like to talk of what is so dear to me,' he replied, gravely. 'I could as soon blot out my own individuality, as blot out the hope of seeing Ethel my future wife; and in that case, it were strange indeed if I did not love to talk of her.'
'Yes, and I have always felt as though it must come right in the end,' interposed Olive, eagerly; 'her manner gives me that impression.'
'What impression?' he asked, startled by her earnestness.
'I can't help thinking she cares for you, though she does not know it; at least she will not allow herself to know it. I have seen her draw herself so proudly sometimes when you have left her. I am sure she is hardening her heart against herself, Cardie.'
A faint smile rose to his lips. 'Livy, who would have thought you could have said such comforting things, just when I was losing heart too?'
'You must never do that,' she returned, in an old-fashioned way that amused him, and yet reminded him somehow of Mildred. 'Any one like you, Cardie, ought never to lose courage.'
'Courage, Cœur-de-Lion!' he returned, mimicking her tone more gaily as his spirits insensibly rose under the sisterly flattery. 'God bless her! she is worth waiting for; there is no other woman in the world to me. Who would have thought we should have got on this subject to-day, of all days in the year? but you have done me no end of good, Livy.'
'Then I have done myself good,' she returned, simply; and indeed some sweet hopeful influence seemed to have crept on her during the last half-hour; she thought how Mildred's loving sympathy would have been aroused if she could have told her how Richard and she had mutually comforted themselves in their dulness. But something still stranger to her experience happened that night before she slept.