They were silent for a moment, and then he resumed, with a smile,--the first that had yet lightened his face, and which now cast on it an inexpressible sweetness--
“Let me thank you for talking so kindly to my little daughter. I trust I have sufficiently explained why I interrupted your lessons.”
“Still, it seems strange,” said Olive. And strong interest conquering her diffidence, she asked how he, a clergyman, had possibly contrived to keep the child in such utter ignorance?
“She has not lived much with me,” he answered; “my little Ailie has been brought up in complete solitude. It was best for a child, whose birth was soon followed by her mother's death.”
Olive trembled lest she had opened a wound; but his words and manner had the grave composure of one who speaks of any ordinary event. Whatever grief he had felt, it evidently was healed. An awkward pause, during which Miss Rothesay tried to think in what way she could best end the conversation. It was broken at last by little Ailie, who crept timidly across the churchyard to her father.
“Please, papa, grandmamma wants to see you before she goes out. She is going to John Dent's, and to Farnwood, and”----
“Hush, little chatterbox! this lady cannot be interested in our family revelations. Bid her 'good-afternoon' and come!”
He tried to speak playfully, but it was a rigid playfulness. Though a father, it was evident he did not understand children. Bowing to Olive with a stately acknowledgment, he walked on alone towards the little wicket-gate. She noticed that his eye never turned back, either to his dead wife's grave or to his living child. Ailie, while his shadow was upon her, had been very quiet; when he walked away, she sprang up, gave Olive one of those rough, sudden, childish embraces which are so sweet, and then bounded away after her father.
Miss Rothesay watched them both disappear, and then was seized with an eager impulse to know who were this strange father and daughter. She remembered the tombstone, the inscription of which she had not yet seen: for it was half-hidden by an overhanging cornice, and by the tall grass that grew close by. Olive had to kneel down in order to decipher it. She did so, and read:
“SARA, Wife of the Reverend Harold Gwynne, Died--, Aged 21.”