"You know that you are always sure of a welcome here."
"But my aunt--how is she?" asked Miss Deane.
"No better, I am sorry to say; neither do I see much prospect of her ever being so. She is confined very much to her own room."
"Poor dear aunt! I am very very sorry to hear that she is no better. Does she keep up her good spirits?"
"Yes," replied Mr. Kelvin; "her spirits are, as they have always been, something wonderful."
"I believe, Matthew, that I love her better than I ever loved my own mother."
"No one can know my mother without liking her," he returned.
"And then what a gentlewoman she is!" said Olive. "There is as much difference between her and Lady Culloden as there is between a flower cut out of a turnip and a real camellia."
Olive Deane at this time was twenty-eight years old. The money which her mother--a sister of the second Matthew Kelvin--had taken as a dowry to her husband had soon been squandered in wild speculations, and it had been impressed upon Olive's mind, almost from the time when she could remember anything, that she would have to earn her own living; and she started with that idea the very first day she went to school. Her mother died when she was ten years old, and her father when she was fifteen; and from the latter age till now she had been altogether dependent on her own exertions for her daily bread. The Kelvins would gladly have assisted her, both then and subsequently, but the girl would accept no help. She went out as nursery governess in the first instance, and had gone on, step by step, till she could now command her ninety or hundred guineas a year as finishing governess in families of distinction. Olive Deane had taken to teaching as naturally as a duck takes to water. She had had five years at a really good French school before her father's death, but everything else she owed to her own love of knowledge and indomitable perseverance. The wasteful extravagance of which she had been a witness when a child at home, had not been without its effect upon her. She grew up thrifty, self-denying, economical in every way; and now, at twenty-eight years of age, she was mistress of four hundred pounds, which her cousin Matthew had advantageously invested for her in Pembridge gas shares.
Olive's sole recreation was a visit now and then to the theatre. A classical play of the sterling old school, she delighted in. She was an omnivorous reader. Anything, from a French novel to the last philosophical essay, had an interest for her. To learn: to know: was all she asked. The quality of the knowledge mattered little or nothing. Wherever she might be, she generally contrived to have half an hour's reading of the Times, so as to keep herself au courant< br> with the chief political movements of the day. She had a clear, hard masculine intellect, with no sentimental nonsense about it, as her cousin Matthew often declared--and he was a great admirer of Olive: in fact, he had been heard to say that if Olive had been a man he would have made her his partner long ago.