Olga got up quickly.  “Violet, what extraordinary things you think of!”

The other girl laughed again, and stooping raised the oaken lid.  “It’s not in the least extraordinary.  Look inside, and picture to yourself how comfy I shall be!  You can come and see me if you like, and spread flowers—­red ones, mind.  I like plenty of colour.”

She dropped the lid again carelessly, and took a gold cigarette-case from her pocket.  The sunlight shone generously upon her at that moment, and Olga Ratcliffe told herself for the hundredth time that this friend of hers was the loveliest girl she had ever seen.  Certainly her beauty was superb, of the Spanish-Irish type that is world-famous,—­black hair that clustered in soft ringlets about the forehead, black brows very straight and delicate, skin of olive and rose, features so exquisite as 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.”

“Doubtless! doubtless!” Violet flicked the ash delicately from her cigarette.  “I am sure he is the soul of virtue.  But how comes it that the devoted Muriel can tear herself from his side to go a-larking on the Continent with the grim and masterful Dr. Jim?”

“Oh, I thought you knew that.  It is for the child’s benefit.  Poor little Reggie has a delicate chest, and Redlands doesn’t altogether suit him.  Dad positively ordered him abroad, and when Muriel demurred about taking him out of Dad’s reach (she has such faith in him, you know), he arranged to go too if Nick would leave Redlands and come and help me keep house.  You see, Dad couldn’t very well leave me to look after Dr. Wyndham singlehanded.”