Olive: A Novel

The dwelling which Miss Rothesay entered was one of the keeper's cottages, built within the forest. The door stood open, for the place was too lowly, even for robbers; and, besi...

If the old painter of Woodford Cottage was an ascetic and a misanthrope never was the “milk of human kindness” so redundant in any human heart as in that of his excellent little...

Many a consultation was held between Mrs. Gwynne and Olive, as to what must be done concerning that hapless child: for little more than a child she was in years, though her mise...

“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...

As the summer advanced, Olive Rothesay and her new friend, sanctioned by the elders of both families, took long walks together, read, and practised. Not that Olive practised, fo...

Miss Rothesay was very silent during the walk home. She accounted for it to Christal by telling the simple truth--that in the churchyard she had found the grave of an early and...

I know that I am promulgating a new theory of love; I know that in Olive Rothesay I dare to paint a woman full of all maidenly virtues, who has yet given her heart away unrequit...

Coming home!--coming home! In different ears how differently sound the words! They who in all their wanderings have still the little, well-filled, love-expectant nest whereto th...

Some days passed in quiet uniformity, broken only by the visits of good-natured Lyle, who came, as he said, to amuse the invalid. Whether that were the truth or no, he was a fre...

“Well, I never in my life knew such a change as Farnwood has made in Miss Manners,” observed old Hannah, the Woodford Cottage maid; who, though carefully kept in ignorance of an...

Late autumn, that season so beautiful in Scotland, was shining into the house at Morningside. She, its mistress, who had there lived from middle life to far-extended years, and...

“Well, darling, how do you feel in our new home?” said Olive to her mother, when, after a long and weary journey, the night came down upon them at Farnwood, the dark, gusty, aut...

Captain Rothesay had intended to make the business-excursion wait on that of pleasure--if pleasure the visit could be called, which was entered on from duty, and would doubtless...

It was a Sunday afternoon, not bright, but dull. All the long day the low clouds had been dropping freshness down;--the soft May-rain, which falls warm and silent, as if the spr...

Next morning Captain Rothesay and his wife sat together by the fireside, where she had so often sat alone. Sybilla seemed in high spirits--her love was ever exuberant in express...

“No letters to-day from Harbury!” observed Mrs. Mora, as, some weeks after Olive's arrival, they were taking their usual morning airing along the Queen's Drive. “My dear, are yo...

It was mid-winter before the inhabitants of the Dell were visited by their friend, Lyle Derwent, now grown a rich and important personage. Olive rather regretted his apparent ne...

In one of the western environs of London is a region which, lying between two great omnibus outlets, is yet as retired and old-fashioned as though it had been miles and miles di...

Olive sat mournfully contemplating Sara Derwent's last letter--the last she knew it would be. It was written, not with the frank simplicity of their girlish confidence, but with...

Seven summers more the grand old mulberry-tree at Woodford Cottage has borne leaf, flower, and fruit; the old dog that used to lie snarling under its branches, lies there still,...

She became an artist--not in a week, a month, a year--Art exacts of its votaries no less service than a lifetime. But in her girl's soul the right chord had been touched, which...

The feeble call startled Olive out of a dream, wherein she was walking through one of those lovely visionary landscapes--more glorious than any ever seen by day--with her mother...

His voice--his long silent voice! Hearing it, the old feeling came over her. She shuddered, even with a sort of fear. “Heaven save me from myself! Heaven keep my heart at peace!...

Olive dressed herself carefully in her delicate-coloured morning-gown. She was one of those women who take pains to appear freshest and fairest in the early hours of the day; to...

It was again the season of late summer; and Time's soothing shadow had risen up between the daughter and her grief. The grave in the beautiful churchyard of Har-bury was bright...

There is not a more hackneyed subject for poetic enthusiasm than that sight--perhaps the loveliest in nature--a young mother with her first-born child. And perhaps because it is...

Perhaps, ere following Olive's fortunes, it may be as well to set the reader's mind at rest concerning the incident narrated in the preceding chapter. It turned out the olden ta...

The subject of Harold Gwynne served Olive-and her mother for a full half-hour's conversation during that idle twilight season which they always devoted to pleasant talk. It was...

In a week's time Christal Manners was fairly domiciled at Woodford Cottage. In what capacity it would be hard to say--certainly not as Miss Vanbrugh's _protégée_--for she assume...

Olive Rothesay was twelve years old, and she had never learnt the meaning of that word whose very sound seems a wail--sorrow. And that other word, which is the dirge of the whol...

Captain Rothesay found himself at breakfast on the sixth morning of his stay at Harbury--so swiftly had the time flown. But he felt a purer and a happier man every hour that he...

This was evermore Olive's cry during the days of awful suspense, when they knew not but that every hour might be Harold's last. He had broken a bloodvessel in the lungs; through...

Never since her birth had Olive felt such a bewildering weight of pain, as when she awoke to the full sense of that terrible secret which she had learned from Harold Gwynne. Thi...

Rivetted by an inexplicable influence, Olive had read the letter through, without once pausing or blenching;--read it as though it had been some strange romance of misery, not r...

Reader, did you ever notice the intense frigidity that can be expressed in a “my dear!” The coldest, cruellest husband we ever knew once impressed this fact on our childish fanc...

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 Engl...

The tomb had scarcely closed over Captain Rothesay, when it was discovered that his affairs were in a state of irretrievable confusion. For months he must have lived with ruin s...

Weeks glided into months; and within the three-mile circle of the Hall, the Parsonage, and the Dell, was as pleasant a little society as could be found, anywhere. Frequent meeti...

The return of the husband and father produced a considerable change in the little family at Stirling. A household, long composed entirely of women, always feels to its very foun...

When Olive returned to consciousness she was lying on her own bed, the same whereon her mother had died. Olive almost thought that she herself had died too, so still lay the sha...

There is not in the world a more exquisite sight than a beautiful old age. It is almost better than a beautiful youth. Early loveliness passes away with its generation, and beco...

Olive and Harold parted at Mrs. Flora's gate. He had business in town, he said, but would return to dinner. So he walked quickly away, and Olive went in and crept upstairs. Ther...

Such was the first greeting ever received by my heroine, Olive Rothesay. However, she would be then entitled neither a heroine nor even “Olive Rothesay,” being a small nameless...

It was many days before Mrs. Rothesay recovered from the shock occasioned by the tidings--to her almost more fearful than her child's death--that it was doomed for life to suffe...

“What is the matter with the child to-day?” said Captain Rothesay to his wife, with whom, oh rare circumstance! he was sitting _tête-à-tête_. But this, and a few other alteratio...

Midnight was long past, and yet Olive sat at her desk; she had finished her note to Mrs. Gwynne, and was poring over a small packet of letters carefully separated from the remai...

Looking back on a calm and uneventful childhood--and by childhood we mean the seven years between the babyhood of five and the dignity of “teens,”--it always seems like a cloudy...

The fourth year of Captain Rothesay's absence passed,--not without anxiety, for it was war-time, and his letters were frequently interrupted. At first, whenever this happened, h...

Mrs. Rothesay, touched by an impulse of regretful tenderness, showed all due respect to the memory of the faithful woman who had nursed with such devotion her husband and her ch...

Night and day there rung in Olive's heart the last words of Harold's letter, “I shall come home!” Simple they were; but they seemed so strangely joyful--so full of hope. She cou...