Miss Deane was a little above the ordinary stature of her sex. She had a lithe, slender figure, and in all her movements she was graceful, easy, and self-possessed. She had clearly-cut, well-defined features, and many people would have called her handsome. But she certainly lacked colour. Her clear olive complexion--strangely in accordance with her name--was too clear and too colourless. Only on very rare occasions was its waxen pallor flushed through with the faintest tinge of damask. She had magnificent eyebrows, and eyes of the darkest brown, that looked jet-black by candlelight, with a keen, watchful look in them, begotten, perhaps, of the time when, little more than a child, she had to fight her way through the world and found a thorn or a pitfall at every step she took. Her hair, too, was black, but a dull, dead, lustreless black, without the slightest gloss of brightness in it, and very fine in quality. She almost invariably dressed in black, with white linen cuffs turned up from the wrist, and a white linen turn-down collar fastened with a simple bow of mauve or violet riband. No ear-rings, no brooch, no ornaments of any kind visible, except an inch of the gold chain that held her watch. "I thought we should have heard the news of your wedding before now, Olive," said Mr. Kelvin. "The news of my wedding, Matthew! You will never hear that." "Never is a long word, Olive. Such a nice, clever girl as you are can't be destined to live and die an old maid." Olive's black eyebrows came together for a moment, and she tapped the floor impatiently with her foot. "It almost seemed at one time, Olive, as if you and I would have come together," went on Kelvin, while his fingers toyed absently with a paper-knife. "Those were pleasant days--those old days on the sands at Redcar, when I was recovering from my sprain, and you did your best to nurse me. You used to read novels to me, and play to me on that vile old lodging-house piano; and out of gratitude I taught you cribbage and écarté. I have never enjoyed a holiday like that. Do you remember our long row by moonlight, and how we kissed as we stepped out of the boat on to the wet sands?" No word from Olive: only a far-away look in her eyes, and the thin straight line of her lips looking thinner and straighter than before. "And yet it all came to nothing!" resumed Kelvin, glancing carelessly at her. "It might have come to something: who knows? Only, two hours later, I was telegraphed for to London, and---- "And, as you say, Matthew," interrupted Olive, "it came to nothing. So much the better probably for both of us." "Certainly so much the better for you, Olive; but whether or not for me, may be open to doubt. Why, even in those old days that now seem so far away, when you and I were girl and boy together, how fond we were of each other! Do you remember that afternoon when the swing broke down and I pitched on my head, and how you cried over my bruises as if your heart would break?"