mma is sure to wake; she always does when you come in. Kiss mamma,
too."

Olive went to bed, happier than she could have believed possible, had
any one told her in the morning that ere night she would hear the ill
news of having to leave beautiful Merivale. But it was so sweet to feel
herself a comfort to both parents--they who, alas! would receive no
comfort from each other.

Only, just when she was falling asleep, the thought floated across
Olive's mind--

"I wonder why papa said that, of course, I should never marry!"

CHAPTER XI.

"Dear mamma, is not this a pretty house, even though it is in a
town?--so pretty, one need hardly pine after Merri-vale."

Thus said Olive when they had been established some time in their new
abode, and sat together, one winter evening, listening to the sweet
bells of Oldchurch--one of the few English parishes where lingers "the
curfew's solemn sound."

"A pretty house, if any one came to see us in it, my dear; but nobody
does. And then we miss the close carriage so much. To think that I
have been obliged to refuse the Stantons' ball and the dinner-party at
Everingham. How dull these long winter evenings will be, Olive!"

Olive answered neither _yes_ nor _no_, but tried quietly, by her
actions, to disprove the fact She was but a child--scarcely would have
been called a clever child; was neither talkative nor musical; and yet
she had a thousand winning ways of killing time, so sweetly that each
minute died, dolphin-like, shedding glorious hues.

A very romantic simile this--one that would never have crossed Olive's
innocent brain. She only knew that she loved her mother; and therefore
tried to amuse and make her happy, so that she might not feel the change
of circumstances--a change so unimportant to Olive, so vital to Mrs.
Rothesay.

Olive, this night, was peculiarly successful in her little _ruse_ of
love. Her mother listened while she explained a whole sketch-book of
designs, illustrative of half-a-dozen modern poets. Mrs. Rothesay even
asked her to read some of the said poets aloud; and though not of an
imaginative temperament, was fain to shed a few womanly tears over
Tennyson's "Queen of the May" and the "Miller's Daughter." Finally, she
was coaxed into sitting to her daughter for her portrait, which Olive
thought would make a design exactly suited to the heroine of the latter
poem, and chiefly at the verse--

"Look through mine eyes with thine. True wife, Round m