Olive asked if Mr. Parnell was good-looking. A railway-bridge was passed
and a pine-wood aglow with the sunset, and a footman stepped down from
the box to open a swinging iron gate.

This was Brookfield. Sheep grazed on the lawn, at the end of which,
beneath some chestnut-trees, was the house. It had been built by the
late Mr. Barton out of a farmhouse, but the present man, having
travelled in Italy and been attracted by the picturesque, had built a
verandah; and for the same reason had insisted on calling his daughter
Olive.

'Oh there, mamma!' cried Olive, looking out of the carriage window; and
the two girls watched their mother, a pretty woman of forty, coming
across the greensward to meet them.

She moved over the greensward in a skirt that seemed a little too
long--a black silk skirt trimmed with jet. As she came forward her
daughters noticed that their mother dyed her hair in places where it
might be suspected of turning grey. It was parted in the middle and she
wore it drawn back over her ears and slightly puffed on either side in
accordance with the fashion that had come in with the Empress Eugenie.
Even in a photograph she was like a last-century beauty sketched by
Romney in pastel--brown, languid, almond-shaped eyes, a thin figure a
little bent. Even in youth it had probably resembled Alice's rather than
Olive's, but neither had inherited her mother's hands--the most
beautiful hands ever seen--and while they trifled with the newly bought
_foulards_ a warbling voice inquired if Olive was sure she was not
tired.

'Five hours in the train! And you, Alice? You must be starving, my dear,