Olive Two were treated as sisters, and even treated themselves as
sisters, they were not sisters. They were not even half-sisters. They
had first met at the age of nine. The father of Olive One, a widower,
had married the mother of Olive Two, a widow. Olive One was the elder by
a few months. Olive Two gradually allowed herself to be called Wardle
because it saved trouble. They got on with one another very well indeed,
especially after the death of both parents, when they became joint
mistresses, each with a separate income, of a nice house at Sneyd, the
fashionable residential village on the rim of the Five Towns. Like all
persons who live long together, they grew in many respects alike. Both
were dark, brooding and passionate, and to this deep similarity a
superficial similarity of habits and demeanour was added. Only, whereas
Olive One was rather more inclined to be the woman of the world, Olive
Two was rather more inclined to study and was particularly interested in
the theory of music.

They were sought after, naturally. And yet they had reached the age of
twenty-five before the world perceived that either of them was not
sought after in vain. The fact, obvious enough, that Pierre Emile
Vaillac had become an object of profound human interest to Olive
One--this fact excited the world, and the world would have been still
more excited had it been aware of another fact that was not at all
obvious: namely, that Pierre Emile Vaillac was the cause of a secret and
terrible breach between the two sisters. Vaillac, a widower with two
young children, Mimi and Jean, was a Frenchman, and a great authority on
the decoration of egg-shell china, who had settled in the Five Towns as
expert partner in one of the classic china firms at Longshaw. He was
undoubtedly a very attractive man.

Olive One, when the relations between herself and Vaillac were