There, at the other side of the fire, sat a girl, half smiling and half blushing as she looked up from her work.

The candles between them had hid her from him.

He advanced, and she rose and held out her hand.

He was confused; she was perfectly collected, although the colour rose a little more in her cheek.

She might have been a year older than Alec.
"So you are a cousin of mine, Mr Forbes!" she said, when they were all seated by the blazing fire--she with a piece of plain work in her hands, he with a very awkward nothing in his, and the professor contemplating his swathed leg on the chair before him.
"So your uncle says," he answered, "and I am very happy to believe him.
I hope we shall be good friends." Alec was recovering himself.
"I hope we shall," she responded, with a quick, shy, asking glance from her fine eyes.
Those eyes were worth looking into, if only as a study of colour.