r pocket. The sunlight shone generously upon her at that moment,
and Olga Ratcliffe told herself for the hundredth time that this friend
of hers was the loveliest girl she had ever seen. Certainly her beauty
was superb, of the Spanish-Irish type that is world-famous,--black hair
that clustered in soft ringlets about the forehead, black brows very
straight and delicate, skin of olive and rose, features so exquisite as
to make one marvel, long-lashed eyes that were neither black nor grey,
but truest, deepest violet.

"Don't look at me like that!" she said, with gay imperiousness. "You
pale-eyed folk have a horrible knack of making one feel as if one is
under a microscope. Your worthy uncle is just the same. If I weren't so
deeply in love with him, I might resent it. But Nick is a privileged
person, isn't he, wherever he goes? Didn't someone once say of him that
he rushes in where angels fear to tread? It's rather an apt
description. How is he, by the way? And why didn't you bring him too?"

She stood on the step, with the sunlight pouring over her, and daintily
smoked her cigarette. Olga came and stood beside her. They formed a
wonderful contrast--a contrast that might have seemed cruel but for the
keen intelligence that gave such vitality to the face of the doctor's
daughter.

"Oh, Nick is playing cricket with the boys," she said. "He is
wonderfully good, you know, and takes immense care of us all."

"A positive paragon, my dear! Don't I know it? A pity he saw fit to
throw himself away upon that very lethargic young woman! I should have
made him a much more suitable wife--if he had only had the sense to wait
a few years instead of snatching the first dark-eyed damsel who came his
way!"

"Oh, really, Violet! And fancy calling Muriel lethargic! She is one of
the deepest people I know, and absolutely devoted to Nick--and he to
her."

"Doubtless! doubtless!" Violet flicked the ash delicately from her
cigarette. "I am sure he is the soul of virtue. But how comes it that
the devoted Muriel can tear herself from his side to go a-larking on the
Continent with the grim and masterful Dr. Jim?"

"Oh, I thought you knew that. It is for the child's benefit. Poor little
Reggie has a delicate chest, and Redlands doesn't altogether suit him.
Dad positively ordered him abroad, and when Muriel demurred about taking
him out of Dad's reach (she has such faith in him, you know), he
arranged to go too if Nick would leave Redlands and