He opened the door and went in.
The room, lined with books, a working-room, was rather dark. It did not face the newly-arrived sun.
But a dancing fire burned upon the hearth, and in a chair by the side of it Mary Marriott sat alone.
Her face was pale, she wore a long, flowing tea-gown, round her feet were scattered the innumerable daily papers in which she had been reading the extraordinary chorus of praise for her triumph of the night before.
She was leaning back in a high-backed armchair covered in green Spanish leather, looking like one of Sargeant's wonderful portraits that catch up eye and heart into a sort of awe at such cunning and splendour of presentation.
The duke stopped upon the threshold for a second—only for a second. He had known what he had come to do directly he was in the house—immediately he had entered the house and felt the influence which pervaded it.
He went quickly up to her and sank on his knees beside her chair.
He took her white hands in his—things of carved ivory, with a soul informing them. An hour ago he had held another pair of hands as beautiful as these.
Her face flushed deeply, her eyes grew wide, her lips parted. She tried to draw her hands away.