There was, indeed, in the very type of her beauty a hint of a carefully calculated, unwasteful adaptation of means to ends quite in the spirit of their sparing ways.  It was a beauty achieved by nature apparently with the surest, and yet with the slightest, expenditure of energy—­a beauty of poise, of line, of delicacy, of reserve—­with nothing of the superfluous, and little even of color, beyond a gleam of chrysoprase in fine, gray eyes and a coppery, metallic luster in hair that otherwise would have passed as chestnut brown.  It was a beauty that came as much from repose in inaction as from grace in movement, but of which a noticeable trait was that it required no more to produce it in the way of effort than in that of artifice.  Through the transparent whiteness of the skin the blue of each clearly articulated vein and the rose of each hurrying flush counted for its utmost in the general economy of values.

It was in keeping with this restraint that in all her ways, her manners, her dress, her speech, her pride, there should be a meticulous simplicity.  It was not the simplicity of the hedge-row any more than of the hothouse; it was rather that of some classic flower, lavender or crown-imperial, growing from an ancient stock in some dignified, long-tended garden.  It was thus a simplicity closely allied to sturdiness—­the inner sturdiness not inconsistent with an outward semblance of fragility—­the tenacity of strength by which the lavender scents the summer and the crown-imperial adorns the spring, after the severest snows.

It was doubtless, this vitality, drawn from deep down in her native soil, that braced her now, to simply holding fast intuitively and almost blindly till the first force of the shock should have so spent itself that the normal working of the faculties might begin again.  It was the something of which she had just spoken to her father—­the something that might be pride but that was not wholly pride, which had never been taxed nor called on.  She could not have defined it in a more positive degree; but even now, when all was confusion and disintegration, she was conscious of its being there, an untouched treasure of resources.

In what it supplied her with, however, there was no answer to the question that had been silently making itself urgent from the first word of her father’s revelations:  What was to happen with regard to her wedding?  It took the practical form of dealing with the mere outward paraphernalia—­the service, the bridesmaids, the guests, the feast.  Would it be reasonable, would it be decent, to carry out rich and elaborate plans in a ruined house?  Further than that she dared not inquire, though she knew very well there was still a greater question to be met.  When, during the course of the morning, Drusilla Fane came to see her, Olivia broached it timidly, though the conversation brought her little in the way of help.