[110]

"I might have known," she murmured to herself. "Olive Girard has the face of one whose love dream has passed away and lost itself in sorrow; and he looks, full of strength and hope, straight into the future."

As they sat together waiting, there was still that same contrast, which you felt rather than saw, between these two. They might have posed as the models of Resignation and Unrest.

The look of patient waiting was five years old upon the face of Olive Girard. Five years ago she had been so happy—a bride, beautiful and beloved. Beautiful she was still—with the beauty of shadow; beloved too, but how sadly! Philip Girard had been convicted of a great crime, and for five long years had worn a felon's garb, and borne the anguish of one set apart from all the world.

The hand that had darkened the life of Olive Girard, and the hand that had turned the young days of the girl Madeline into a burden, was one and the same.

Afterwards Madeline listened to the pathetic history of Olive's sorrow.

Sitting in that great lounging chair, Madeline looked very fair, very childlike. Sadly sweet were her large, deep eyes, and her hair, shorn while the fever raged, clustered in soft tiny rings about her slender, snowy neck and blue-veined temples. She had not been permitted to talk much during her convalescence, and Olive had as yet gleaned only a general outline of her story.

"Mrs. Girard," said the girl, resting her pale cheek in the palm of a thin, tiny hand, "you once said something to me about—about some one who had been wronged by—" Something sadder than tears choked her utterance.[111]

[111]

As Olive turned her grave clear eyes away from the window, and fixed them in expectation upon her; Madeline's own eyes fell. She sat before her benefactress with downcast lids, and the hateful name unuttered.

"I know," said Olive, after a brief silence; "I referred to a girl now lying in the hospital. She is very young, and has been cruelly wronged by him. She is poor, as you may judge, and earned her living in the ballet at the theater. She was thrown from a carriage which had been furnished her by him, to carry her home from some rendezvous—of course the driver took care of himself and his horses. The poor girl was picked up and carried to the hospital. She was without friends and almost 

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