"I've been putting a ribbon in," she confessed. "Did you ever see such a mess! Please make yourself comfortable while I go and wash."
The Marquis glanced with a slight frown at the machine, and, taking her wrists, stooped down and kissed them lightly.
"My dear Marcia," he expostulated, "is this necessary!"
She shook her head with a droll smile.
"Perhaps if it were," she confessed, "I should hate to do it. There's a Nineteenth Century on the sofa. You can read my article."
She hurried out of the room, from which she was absent only a very few moments. The Marquis, with a finger between the pages of the review which he had been reading, looked up as she re-entered. She was a woman of nameless gifts, of pleasant if not unduly slim figure. Her forehead was perhaps a little low, her eyes brilliant and intelligent, her mouth large and exceedingly mobile. She was not above the allurements of dress, for her house gown, with its long tunic trimmed with light fur, was of fashionable cut and becoming. Her fingers, cleansed now from the violet stains, were shapely, almost elegant. She threw herself into an easy chair opposite her visitor, and reached out her hand for a cigarette.
"Well," she asked, "and how has the great trial ended?"
"Adversely," the Marquis confessed.
"You foolish person," she sighed, lighting the cigarette and throwing the match away. "Of course you were bound to lose, and I suppose it's cost you no end of money."
"I believe," he admitted, a little stiffly, "that my lawyers are somewhat depressed at the amount."