The elder woman nodded—that kindly pitying nod with which a science-trained generation recognizes and, even in recognizing, classifies, the old poetic superstitions of the race. But her pity was really for the tall, supple, low-voiced girl at her feet: this brave, beautiful creature who was slowly growing blind.
Olivia glanced at her, with great brown eyes that betrayed no sign of the fatal web that nature was steadily weaving in their depths. There was a slight smile upon her lips. Each of the women knew what was in the other's mind.
Miss Rodman laid down the Journal. "I shouldn't have read it, dear," she said, at last. "I didn't know what was coming."
"But it is such a pretty fancy!" exclaimed Olivia. "I shall be looking for white blackbirds under every bush, Auntie."
She drew a long breath—too long, alas! for a girl of twenty—and then with a sort of unconscious feminine instinct patted her heavy hair more closely into place and began to brush the balsam-needles from the folds of her walking-skirt.
Miss Rodman made no answer. There seemed to be nothing to say. In this matter of Olivia's eyes nature was playing one of her countless petty tragedies; science, the counter-player, stood helpless on the stage, and Olivia herself was outwardly one of the coolest of the few spectators.
She had done all that could be done. Dr. Sands, the rising specialist, an intimate friend of the Lanes and the Rodmans, had sent her to London to consult Watson, and Watson's verdict was not reassuring. Then he had sent her to Forget, at Paris, and Forget had shaken his head. Finally Dr. Sands had advised her to come here to the Morraway region for the air and the perfect quiet. Once a month he dropped everything in New York and came up himself to make an examination and give his brief report. At the end of June he had told Miss Rodman that Olivia had perhaps one chance in five of keeping her eyesight. A month later he pronounced it one chance in fifty. Dr. Sands stayed three days at the Morraway Hotel that time, before giving his opinion, and a more difficult professional duty he had never had to perform. If she were only some girl who walked into his office and out again, like the hundreds of others, it would have been different, but to tell Olivia Lane seemed as brutal as it would have been to strike her. And on this August evening he had promised to come again.
By and by Miss Rodman slipped down from the rustic bench and seated herself by her niece. The girl stroked her aunt's shoulder lightly. Everything that could be said had been said already, when the horror of that great darkness had not drawn quite so near.
And yet there was one question which Olivia longed to ask, though she feared the answer; trembling either way, as a child that asks whether she may run to snatch a glistening shell upon the beach even while another wave is racing to engulf it. Olivia's blindness was that black, all-engulfing wave. And the treasure which she might catch to her bosom, childlike, ere the dark wave fell?
"Auntie," demanded Miss Lane, abruptly, "have you told Mr. Allan about my eyes?"