ass.

"I see as I never saw before--so little I thought of myself. Yes, it is
quite true--quite true."

She spoke beneath her breath, and her eyes seemed fascinated into a
hard, cold gaze. Sara became almost frightened.

"Do not look so, my dear girl; I did not say that it was a positive
_deformity_."

Olive faintly shuddered: "Ah, that is the word! I understand it all
now."

She paused a moment, covering her face. But very soon she sat down, so
quiet and pale that Sara was deceived.

"You do not mind it, then, Olive--you are not angry with me?" she said
soothingly.

"Angry with you--how could I be?"

"Then you will come back with me, and we will have another dance."

"Oh, no, no!" And the cheerful good-natured voice seemed to make Olive
shrink with pain. "Sara, dear Sara, let me go home!"

CHAPTER XIII.

"Well, my love, was the ball as pleasant as you expected?" said Mrs.
Rothesay, when Olive drew the curtains, and roused her invalid mother to
the usual early breakfast, received from no hands but hers.

Olive answered quietly, "Every one said it was pleasant."

"But you," returned the mother, with an anxiety she could scarce
disguise--"who talked to you?--who danced with you?"

"No one, except Sara."

"Poor child!" was the half involuntary sigh; and Mrs. Rothesay drew her
daughter to her with deep tenderness.

It was a strange fate, that made the once slighted child almost the
only thing in the world to which Sybilla Rothesay now clung. And yet, so
rich, so full had grown the springs of maternal love, long hidden in her
nature, that she would not have exchanged their sweetness to be
again the petted, wilful, beautiful darling of society, as she was at
Stirling. The neglected wife--the often-ailing mother--dependent on her
daughter's tenderness, was happier and nearer to heaven than she had
ever been in her life.

Mrs. Rothesay regarded Olive earnestly. "You look as ill as if you
had been up all night; and yet you came to bed tolerably early, and I
thought you slept, you lay so quiet. Was it so, darling?"

"Not quite; I was thinking," said Olive, truthfully, though her face
flushed, for she would fain have kept her bitter thoughts from her
mother. Just then, Mrs. Rothesay started at the sound of the hall-bell.

"Is that your father come home? He said he might, today or to-morrow."

Olive went down-stairs. It was only a letter, to say Captain Rothesay
would return that day, and would bring