'How can I help it? There are so few who really act up to their principles in this world, who when the moment for self-sacrifice comes are able cheerfully to count the cost and renounce the desire of their heart. Ah!' she continued, 'when I think of your yearning after a missionary life, and that you are giving up a woman's brightest prospect for the sake of an ailing parent, I feel that you have done a very noble thing indeed.'
'Hush, I do not deserve all this praise. I am only doing my duty.'
'True; and after all we are only unprofitable servants. I wish I had your humility, Olive. I feel as though I should be too happy sometimes if it were not for the sorrows of others. They are shadows on the sunshine. Ethel is always in my thoughts, and now you will be there too.'
'I do not think—I do not mean to be unhappy,' faltered Olive. '"God loveth a cheerful giver," I must remember that, Aunt Milly. Perhaps,' she continued, more humbly, 'I am not fit for the work. Perhaps he might be disappointed in me, and I should only drag him down. Don't you recollect what papa once said in one of his sermons about obstacles standing like the angel with the drawn sword before Balaam, to turn us from the way?'
Mildred sighed. How often she had envied the childish faith which lay at the bottom of Olive's character, though hidden by the troublesome scrupulousness of a too sensitive conscience. Was the healthy growth she had noticed latterly owing to Mr. Marsden's influence, or had she really, by God's grace, trodden on the necks of her enemies?
'You must not be sorry about all this,' continued the girl, earnestly, noticing the sigh. 'You don't know how glad I am that Mr. Marsden cares for me.'
'I cannot help feeling that some day it will all come right,' returned Mildred.
'I must not think about that,' was the hurried answer. 'Aunt Milly, please never to say or hint such a thing again. It would be wrong; it would make me restless and dissatisfied. I shall always think of him as a dear friend—but—but I mean to be Olive Lambert all my life.'
Mildred smiled and kissed her, and then consented very reluctantly to change the subject, but nevertheless she held to her opinion as firmly as Olive to hers.
Mildred might well say that the sorrows of others shadowed her brightness. During the autumn and winter that followed her marriage her affectionate heart was often oppressed by thoughts of that dreary sickroom. Her husband had predicted from the first that only partial recovery could be expected in Mr. Trelawny's case. A few months or years of helplessness was all that remained to the once lithe and active frame of the master of Kirkleatham.