"I know you too well, Matthew, not to feel sure that in ten years from this time you hope to be in a very different position."
Kelvin dropped the paper knife with which he had been playing, and gazed steadily at his cousin for a moment before speaking.
Her eyes met his unshrinkingly.
"You are right, Olive," he said, speaking 'gravely enough now. "I do< br> cherish some strangely bold dreams. I am an ambitious man; but you are the only person who seems to have divined that fact. I am far richer than the world knows of; and, but that it would almost break my mother's heart, I should have given up the old business years ago. In any case, I shall dispose of it before long. I can afford now to put it behind me. The first step in my ambition is to get into Parliament. And so you think I ought to get married, eh?"
"Yes--to a woman who could help you forward in your career by sympathizing with and comprehending the aims and objects of your ambition. No mere drawing-room doll must be your wife, but a woman fitted in heart and brain to be your companion."
"I won't say that you are not right," said Mr. Kelvin. "But in these matters men rarely do that which their friends think they ought to do. Cupid, you know, never went to school, and his problems cannot be worked out by rule-of-three."
"That may apply to a very young man, who lacks sense to know what is best for him and where to look for it; but not to you."
"That is just where you make a mistake, Olive. What will you say of my strength of mind--of my common sense--when I tell you that I have fallen in love with a simple country girl with nothing to recommend her save a pretty face and the finest eyes in the world?"
Olive Deane rose slowly to her feet. Her face grew whiter; her eyes blacker; her thick brows made a straight, unbroken line across her forehead. If looks had power to slay, Mr. Kelvin would have been annihilated on the spot. But his face was turned the other way. His own thoughts held him. He was gazing meditatively into the fire.
"And she--she accepted you, of course?" said Olive, at last, her voice hardly raised above a whisper.