From which remarks it will readily be concluded that Dolly Gerace was no beauty; further, that she was not merely destitute of good looks, but that she had several undesirable points about her. These things were the case. Dolly had not a good feature in her face. In person she was small, slight, insignificant; mentally, she was an utter anomaly to those who came in contact with her; while in more serious matters, though born in a Christian land of Christian parents--having been duly baptized and confirmed--being the daughter of a clergyman, and the only living child of a most truly good woman, Dolly was as thorough a little heathen as if she had called a squaw mother--and a brave father. More so indeed, for then she would have had some settled idea of a certain code of morals and religion. As matters stood, Dolly, for all she seemed to reverence or respect anything, might have been her own Creator--her own all in all. Not that any one could accuse her of flippancy, irreverence, undue selfishness, or habitual ill-humour. She had a want of something, rather than an excess of any evil quality; indeed she had no evil quality, unless an occasional tendency to flame up could be so considered. But then she never flamed up except when her equanimity had been long and sorely tried, and the usual happy brightness of her temper was pleasant as sunshine--as music--as the songs of birds--as the perfume of flowers. Long before Mortomley came upon the scene, Miss Trebasson had exercised her mind upon the subject of Dolly Gerace. After much consideration, which ended in leaving her as wise as she was before, it suddenly dawned upon Miss Trebasson that her friend either had been born without a soul or that it had never developed. From that hour Miss Trebasson treated Dolly with the same sort of tenderness as she might an eminently interesting and attractive infant; and when it was proved to demonstration that Mortomley had fallen in love with the girl, Miss Trebasson, after the first bitterness was over, felt no surprise at his choice. Beside Dolly, spite of her beauty, her intellect, her ancestors, her titled relations, Leonora Trebasson knew she must look but as a bird of very dull plumage. Weather, means, the state of the domestic atmosphere, the depression of the home funds, never made any difference to Dolly. Given that you expected her, and she was quite certain to appear crisp, smiling, happy, bright, with nothing to say perhaps particularly worth recording, and yet able to say that nothing in a way which made the time speed by quickly and pleasantly.