“Don't talk so, my little pet,” said Sara, looking pained and puzzled. Yet, instinctively, her eye glanced to the mirror, where their two reflections stood. So did Olive's.
“Yes, I know,” she murmured. “I am little, and plain, and in figure very awkward—not graceful like you. Would that make people hate me, Sara?”
“Not hate you; but”——
“Well, go on—nay, I will know all!” said Olive firmly; though gradually a thought—long subdued—began to dawn painfully in her mind.
“I assure you, dear,” began Sara, hesitatingly, “it does not signify to me, or to any of those who care for you; you are such a gentle little creature, we forget it all in time. But perhaps with strangers, especially with men, who think so much about beauty, this defect”——
She paused, laying her arm round Olive's shoulders—even affectionately, as if she herself were much moved. But Olive, with a cheek that whitened, and a lip that quivered more and more, looked resolutely at her own shape imaged in the glass.
“I see as I never saw before—so little I thought of myself. Yes, it is quite true—quite true.”
She spoke beneath her breath, and her eyes seemed fascinated into a hard, cold gaze. Sara became almost frightened.
“Do not look so, my dear girl; I did not say that it was a positive deformity.”
Olive faintly shuddered: “Ah, that is the word! I understand it all now.”