y
were three; they ought to have been but two; she was one too many; they
must wish her away. And yet, Christina had asked her precisely and
specially that she might be one of the company that night. Dolly would
have wished herself away, nevertheless; only that she was so very much
interested, and could not. The newcomer excited her curiosity greatly,
and provoked her observation; and, if the truth must be told, exercised
also a powerful attraction upon her. He sat before the fire, full in
her view, and struck Dolly as different from all the people she had
ever seen in her life. She took glances from time to time, as she
could, at the fine, frank, manly face, which had an unusual combination
of the two qualities, frankness and manliness; was much more than
usually serious, for a man of his age; and yet, she saw now and then,
could break to tenderness or pleasure or amusement, with a sweetness
that was winning. Dolly was fascinated, and could not wish herself
away; why should she, if Christina did not?

In all her life she never forgot the images of two of the people around
the fire that evening. "Sandie" in the middle, in front of the blaze;
Christina on the other hand of him. She was in a glistening robe of
dark blue silk, her fair hair knotted and wound gracefully about her
head; a beautiful creature; looking at her lover with complacent looks
of possession and smiles of welcome. Dolly never knew what sort of a
figure the third was; she could not see herself, and she never thought
about it. Yet she was a foil to the other two, and they were a foil to
her, as she sat there at the corner of the hearth on a low cushion, in
her black dress, and with no ornament about her other than the cameo
ring. A creature very different from the beauty at the other corner of
the fireplace; more delicate, more sensitive, more spiritual; oddly and
inexplicably, more of a child and more of a woman. That's a rare
mixture. There was something exceedingly sweet and simple in her soft
brown eyes and her lips; but the eyes had looked at life, the brow was
grave, and the lips could close into lines of steady will. The delicate
vessel was the shrine of a soul, as large as it could hold, and so had
taken on the transparent nobility which belongs to the body when the
soul is allowed to be dominant. One point of the contrast between the
two girls was in the character and arrangement of their hair.
Christina's was smooth, massed, and in a sort massi