A Secret of the Sea: A Novel. Vol. 1 (of 3)

by T. W. Speight

"I suppose we men of law see with different spectacles from anybody else," said Matthew. "Suspicion is part of our stock-in-trade."

"I was certainly very much taken with Mr. Pomeroy," returned Mrs. Kelvin; "but at the same time my suspicion with regard to Olive made me interest myself more in his case than I should otherwise have done."

Mrs. Kelvin was not a woman to readily abandon any point that she had set her mind on carrying. Before bidding her son goodnight, she won from him a promise that he would do his best to obtain for Mr. Pomeroy the coveted situation.

Olive Deane was quite aware that her cousin would be greatly annoyed when he should come to ascertain what had been done during his absence, and she wisely left to his mother the task of telling him. Certainly she would have been anything but satisfied--anything but pleased--had she heard the conversation between her aunt and her cousin. The reference to a possible liking on her part for Pomeroy would have touched her pride to the quick. Very, very different was the feeling at work deep down in her heart.

Mrs. Kelvin, in fact, had been altogether mistaken with regard to the reasons which had induced Olive to accept the situation of governess to Lady Dudgeon's children. Olive had no option but to accept it--or felt that she had not. When Lady Dudgeon made her the offer, and when her aunt said, "It would be a capital situation for you, and were I you I should certainly accept it," Olive felt that she was not at liberty to do otherwise--not at liberty to live an idle life any longer. She had always given her aunt to understand that she was merely taking a few weeks' rest before looking out for another situation. Here was an excellent situation ready to her hand. How was it possible that she should refuse it?

And yet--and yet no one but herself knew how bitter it was to her to have to quit that roof; no one but herself knew how infinitely sweet to her had been those few weeks of sojourn with her cousin and her aunt! She had loved Matthew Kelvin with an undivided love from the time when, as girl and boy, they had played together. It was a love that had grown with her growth, and had rooted itself more firmly in her heart with each passing year.

She was clear-sighted enough to know that never since the time of that brief, romantic episode at Redcar, when she had had him all to herself for a blissful fortnight, had Matthew Kelvin felt for her anything warmer than a mere cousinly, or, at the most, a quiet, brotherly affection. She was sufficiently versed in worldly knowledge to be aware that the chances that she, a poor governess, neither very young nor very handsome, should ever become the wife of her ambitious, well-to-do cousin were about as remote as it was possible for them to be. And yet, for all that, a dim, faint hope had always held possession of her heart--so dim and so faint, that she herself seemed to be hardly aware of its existence--that among the unknown chances and changes of the future, that out of the involvement and evolution of the great unrehearsed drama of life, with its unforeseen exits and entrances, such a happy climax might somehow--she could not tell how--be brought about.

She had got into the way of looking upon her cousin as a man not likely to marry. If this view of his character struck the foundation from her own hopes, it seemed to preclude fear from any other quarter. When, therefore, Matthew told her the story of his love for, and rejection by, Eleanor Lloyd, it came upon her with all the force of an astounding revelation. Happily there seemed no likelihood of Miss Lloyd altering her determination not to accept Mr. Kelvin; therefore, as far as she--Olive--was concerned, she would not look upon the campaign as entirely lost even now.

Many a husband has been won through his rejection by a rival. Men at such times are prone to seek the first pleasant shelter that offers itself to them. They want to lie quiet and heal them of their wounds; and there are plenty of women in the world ready to act the part of physician to the wounds inflicted by another, provided only that the wounded knight will agree to wear no other gage than theirs in time to come.

Such a physician would Olive gladly have become, rather than lose her knight, if he would but have consented to such a method of treatment. But Mr. Kelvin was no soft-hearted swain who thinks the world is no longer good for anything because a certain pair of white arms refuse to coil themselves round his neck. It is true that he had told her of his wounds, but he had expressed no desire to be healed of them; he had given Olive no encouragement whatever to offer herself as his nurse. He had expressed himself very bitterly with regard to the person who had so wounded him, and Olive had done her best to intensify that bitterness; but that was all. She felt that she was not one step nearer the capture of her cousin's heart than on that day, now several weeks ago, when he had first told her of his love for Miss Lloyd. But was that love really dead? Was it not, unknown to himself, still smouldering in his heart, ready at the slightest provocation to burst into a flame tenfold more ardent than before?