"So," she answered, wiping her eyes, and lifting up her head; "I thought I was generous; I thought I was a Christian, but it is not easy to be a Christian when one is mortified, and humbled, and wounded. I am a great disappointment to myself; quite as great as you are to me. I fancied myself very superior to what I am. I hope you may not be disappointed in that girl in Sark."

The latter words were not spoken in an amiable tone, but this was no time for criticising Julia. She had made a tremendous sacrifice, that was evident; and a whole sacrifice without any blemish is very rarely offered up nowadays, however it may have been in olden times. I could not look at her dejected face and gloomy expression without a keen sense of self-reproach.

"Julia," I said, "I shall never be quite happy--no, not with Olivia as my wife--unless you and I are friends. We have grown up together too much as brother and sister, for me to have you taken right out of my life without a feeling of great loss. It is I who would lose a right hand or a right eye in losing you. Some day we must be friends again as we used to be."

"It is not very likely," she answered; "but you had better go now, Martin. It is very painful to me for you to be here."

I could not stay any longer after that dismissal. Her hand was lying on her lap, and I stooped down and kissed it, seeing on it still the ring I had given her when we were first engaged. She did not look at me or bid me good-by; and I went out of the house, my veins tingling with shame and gladness. I met Captain Carey coming up the street, with a basket of fine grapes in his hand. He appeared very much amazed.

"Why, Martin!" he exclaimed; "can you have been to see Julia?"

"Yes," I answered.

"Reconciled?" he said, arching his eyebrows, which were still dark and bushy though his hair was grizzled.

"Not exactly," I replied, with a stiff smile, exceedingly difficult to force; "nothing of the sort indeed. Captain, when will you take me across to Sark?"

"Come, come! none of that, Martin," he said; "you're on honor, you know.

You are pledged to poor Julia not to visit Sark again."

"She has just set me free," I answered; and out of the fulness of my heart I told him all that had just passed between us. His eyes glistened, though a film came across them which he had to wipe away.

"She is a noble girl," he ejaculated; "a fine, generous, noble girl. I really thought she'd break her heart over you at first, but she will come round again now. We will have a run over to Sark to-morrow."

I felt myself lifted into a third heaven of delight all that evening. My mother and I talked of no one but Olivia. The present rapture so completely eclipsed the coming sorrow, that I forgot how soon it would be upon me. I remember now that my mother neither by word nor sign suffered me to be reminded of her illness. She listened to my rhapsodies, smiling with her divine, pathetic smile. There is no love, no love at all, like that of a mother!

CHAPTER THE TWENTY-EIGHTH.

A BRIGHT BEGINNING.

Not the next day, which was wet and windy, but the day following, did Captain Carey take me over to Sark. I had had time to talk over all my plans for the future with my mother, and I bore with me many messages from her to the girl I was about to ask to become my wife.

Coxcomb as I was, there was no doubt in my mind that I could win Olivia.

To explain my coxcombry is not a very easy task. I do not suppose I had a much higher sense of my own merits than such as is common to man. I admit I was neither shy nor nervous on the one hand, but on the other I was not blatantly self-conceited. It is possible that my course through life hitherto--first as an only son adored by his mother, and secondly as an exceedingly eligible _parti_ in a circle where there were very few young men of my rank and family, and where there were twenty or more marriageable women to one unmarried man--had a great deal to do with my feeling of security with regard to this unknown, poor, and friendless stranger. But, added to this, there was Olivia's own frank, unconcealed pleasure in seeing me, whenever I had had a chance of visiting her, and the freedom with which she had always conversed with me upon any topic except that of her own mysterious position. I was sure I had made a favorable impression upon her. In fact, when I had been talking with her, I had given utterance to brighter and clearer thoughts than I had ever been conscious of before. A word from her, a simple question, seemed to touch the spring of some hidden treasure of my brain, and I had surprised myself by what I had been enabled to say to her. It was this, probably more than her beauty, which had drawn me to her and made me happy in her companionship. No, I had never shown myself contemptible, but quite the reverse, in her presence. No doubt or misgiving assailed me as the yacht carried us out of St. Sampson's Harbor.

Swiftly we ran across, with a soft wind drifting over the sea and playing upon our faces, and a long furrow lying in the wake of our boat.

It was almost low tide when we reached the island--the best time for seeing the cliffs. They were standing well out of the water, scarred and chiselled with strange devices, and glowing in the August sunlight with tints of the most gorgeous coloring, while their feet, swathed with brown seaweed, were glistening with the dashing of the waves. I had seen nothing like them since I had been there last, and the view of these wild, rugged crags, with their regal robes of amber and gold and silver, almost oppressed me with delight. If I could but see Olivia on this summit!

The currents and the wind had been in favor of our running through the channel between Sark and Jethou, and so landing at the Creux Harbor, on the opposite coast of the island to the Havre Gosselin. I crossed in headlong haste, for I was afraid of meeting with Julia's friends, or some of my own acquaintances who were spending the summer months there.

I found Tardif's house completely deserted. The only sign of life was a family of hens clucking about the fold.

The door was not fastened, and I entered, but there was nobody there. I stood in the middle of the kitchen and called, but there was no answer.

Olivia's door was ajar, and I pushed it a little more open. There lay books I had lent her on the table, and her velvet slippers were on the floor, as if they had only just been taken off. Very worn and brown were the little slippers, but they reassured me she had been wearing them a short time ago.

I returned through the fold and mounted the bank that sheltered the house, to see if I could discover any trace of her, or Tardif, or his mother. All the place seemed left to itself. Tardif's sheep were browsing along the cliffs, and his cows were tethered here and there, but nobody appeared to be tending them. At last I caught sight of a head rising from behind a crag, the rough shock head of a boy, and I shouted to him, making a trumpet with my hands.

"Where is neighbor Tardif?" I called.

"Down below there," he shouted back again, pointing downward to the Havre Gosselin. I did not wait for any further information, but darted off down the long, steep gulley to the little strand, where the pebbles were being lapped lazily by the ripple of the lowering tide. Tardif's boat was within a stone's throw, and I saw Olivia sitting in the stern of it. I shouted again with a vehemence which made them both start.

"Come back, Tardif," I cried, "and take me with you."

The boat was too far off for me to see how my sudden appearance affected Olivia. Did she turn white or red at the sound of my voice? By the time it neared the shore, and I plunged in knee-deep to meet it, her face was bright with smiles, and her hands were stretched out to help me over the boat's side.

If Tardif had not been there, I should have kissed them both. As it was, I tucked up my wet legs out of reach of her dress, and took an oar, unable to utter a word of the gladness I felt.

I recovered myself in a few seconds, and touched her hand, and grasped Tardif's with almost as much force as he gripped mine.

"Where are you going to?" I asked, addressing neither of them in particular.

"Tardif was going to row me past the entrance to the Gouliot Caves,"

answered Olivia, "but we will put it off now. We will return to the shore, and hear all your adventures, Dr. Martin. You come upon us like a phantom, and take an oar in ghostly silence. Are you really, truly there?"

"I am no phantom," I said, touching her hand again. "No, we will not go back to the shore. Tardif shall row us to the caves, and I will take you into them, and then we two will return along the cliffs. Would you like that, mam'zelle?"

"Very much," she answered, the smile still playing about her face. It was brown and freckled with exposure to the sun, but so full of health and life as to be doubly beautiful to me, who saw so many wan and sickly faces. There was a bloom and freshness about her, telling of pure air, and peaceful hours and days spent in the sunshine. I was seated on the bench before Tardif, with my back to him, and Olivia was in front of me--she, and the gorgeous cliffs, and the glistening sea, and the cloudless sky overhead. No, there is no language on earth that could paint the rapture of that moment.

"Doctor," said Tardif's deep, grave voice behind me, "your mother, is she better?"

It was like the sharp prick of a poniard, which presently you knew must pierce your heart.

The one moment of rapture had fled. The paradise, that had been about me for an instant, with no hint of pain, faded out of my sight. But Olivia remained, and her face grew sad, and her voice low and sorrowful, as she leaned forward to speak to me.

"I have been so grieved for you," she said. "Your mother came to see me once, and promised to be my friend. Is it true? Is she so very ill?"

"Quite true," I answered, in a choking voice.

We said no more for some minutes, and the splash of the oars in the water was the only sound. Olivia's air continued sad, and her eyes were downcast, as if she shrank from looking me in the face.

"Pardon me, doctor," said Tardif in our own dialect, which Olivia could not understand, "I have made you sorry when you were having a little gladness. Is your mother very ill?"

"There is no hope, Tardif," I answered, looking round at his honest and handsome face, full of concern for me.

"May I speak to you as an old friend?" he asked. "You love mam'zelle, and you are come to tell her so?"

"What makes you think that?" I said.

"I see it in your face," he answered, lowering his voice, though he knew Olivia could not tell what we were saying. "Your marriage with mademoiselle your cousin was broken off--why? Do you suppose I did not guess? I knew it from the first-week you stayed with us. Nobody could see mam'zelle as we see her, without loving her."

"The Sark folks say you are in love with her yourself, Tardif," I said, almost against my will, and certainly without any intention beforehand of giving expression to such a rumor.

His lips contracted and his face saddened, but he met my eyes frankly.

"It is true," he answered; "but what then? If it had only pleased God to make me like you, or that she should be of my class, I would have done my utmost to win her. But that is impossible! See, I am nothing else than a servant in her eyes. I do not know how to be any thing else, and I am content. She is as far above my reach as one of the white clouds up yonder. To think of myself as any thing but her servant would be irreligious."