It was a woman, young and singularly beautiful.

She was of the German type, blonde and fair-haired, with the piquant contrast of a pair of beautiful dark eyes with which she surveyed the stranger with surprise and a pleasing embarrassment which brought a wave of colour over her pale face.

Framed in the bright light of the open doorway, it seemed to McMurdo that he had never seen a more beautiful picture; the more attractive for its contrast with the sordid and gloomy surroundings.

A lovely violet growing upon one of those black slag-heaps of the mines would not have seemed more surprising.

So entranced was he that he stood staring without a word, and it was she who broke the silence.
"I thought it was father," said she with a pleasing little touch of a German accent.