Olive began, but it was difficult for Mildred to follow the long rambling confession; with all her love for truth, Olive's morbid sensitiveness tinged most things with exaggeration. Mildred hardly knew if her timidity and incoherence were not jumbling facts and suppositions together with a great deal of intuitive wisdom and perception. There was a sad amount of guess-work and unreality, but after a few leading questions, and by dint of allowing Olive to tell her story in her own way, she contrived to get tolerably near the true state of the case.
It appeared that Olive had for a long time been seriously unhappy about her brothers. Truthful and uncompromising herself, there had seemed to her a want of integrity and a blamable lack of openness in their dealings with their father. With the best intentions, they were absolutely deceiving him by leaving him in such complete, ignorance of their wishes and intentions. Royal especially was making shipwreck of his father's hopes concerning him, devoting most of his time and energies to a secret pursuit; while his careless preparation for his tutor was practical, if not actual, dishonesty.
'At least Cardie works hard enough,' interrupted Mildred at this point.
'Yes, because it will serve either purpose; but, Aunt Milly, he ought to tell papa how he dreads the idea of being ordained; it is not right; he is unfit for it; it is worse than wrong--absolute sacrilege;' and Olive poured out tremblingly into her aunt's shocked ear that she knew Cardie had doubts, that he was unhappy about himself. No--no one had told her, but she knew it; she had watched him, and heard him talk, and she burst into tears as she told Mildred that once he absolutely sneered at something in his father's sermon which he declared obsolete, and not a matter of faith at all.
'But, my dear,' interrupted the elder woman, anxiously, 'my brother ought to know. I--some one--must speak to Richard.'
'Oh, Aunt Milly, you will hear--it is I--who have done the mischief; but you told me there were no such things as conflicting duties; and what is the use of a conscience if it be not to guide and make us do unpleasant things?'
'I have often tried to speak to him, but he was always angry, and muttered something about my interference; he could not bear me to read him so truly. I know it was all Mr. Macdonald. Papa had him to stay here for a month, and he did Cardie so much harm.'