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."