'Does Mr. Marsden care for you. I thought so from the first, Olive.'
'I suppose he does, or else he would not have said what he did; it was difficult to know his meaning at first, he was so embarrassed, and I was so slow; but we understood each other at last.'
'Tell me all he said, dear,' pleaded Mildred. Could it be her own love story that Olive was treating so simply? There was a chord of sadness in her voice, and a film gathered over the brightness of her eyes, but there was no agitation in her manner; the deep of her soul might be touched, but the surface was calm.
'There is not much to tell, Aunt Milly, but of course you may know all. We had said good-bye, and I had spoken a word or two about his work, and how I thought it the most beautiful work that a man could do, and then he asked me if I should ever be willing to share in it.'
'Well?'
'I did not understand him at first, as I told you, until he made his meaning more plain, and then I saw how it was, that he hoped that one day I might give myself heart and soul to the same work; that my talent, beautiful, as he owned it to be, might not hinder me from such a glorious reality—"the reality,"' and here for the first time she faltered and grew crimson, '"of such work as must fall to a missionary's wife."'
'Olive, my dear child,' exclaimed Mildred, now really startled, 'did he say as much as that?'
'Yes, indeed, Aunt Milly; and he asked if I could care enough for him to make such a sacrifice.'
'My dear, how very sudden.'
'It did not seem so. I cannot make out why I was not more surprised. It came to me as though I had expected it all along. Of course I told him that I liked him better than any one else I had seen, but that I never thought that any one could care for me in that way; and then I told him that while my father lived nothing would induce me to leave him.'