Excerpt from The Opal: A NovelMary elton was a girl whom her friends called unusual, and her friends' friends, peculiar. She was young enough to be judged leniently by her elders on the ground of her immaturity, and old enough to be looked up to by her juniors as a clever woman whose character was past the formative period. An undisguised interest in her own character frequently laid her Open to the charge of egotism, but she had never been accused of conceit. A sort of fundamental frankness, combined with a remarkably clear vision, was the basis of her nature. Seeing things without disguise made it possible to speak of thingswithout reserve, and neither timidity nor politeness ever tempted her to call black white, or even gray, and a spade was given no less definite a name when she found it necessary to refer to that symbol of the unmentionable.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.