"You and I together—your beauty and my brains—I pit the pair of us against all mankind! Together we have worked pretty little miracles before now, causing the proud to lay aside their pride and the godly their virtue. A man of strange passions shall hardly escape us—nor shall the mother that bare him escape either."
Her face hardened, her laughing eyes paled to the colour of fine steel. She lifted the soft-curling hair from off her right temple disclosing a small, crescent-shaped scar.
"That is the one blemish, and we will exact the price of it—you and I—to the ultimate sou."
Then she moved away, overcome by sudden amusement at her own attitude, which she perceived risked being slightly comic. Heroics were, to her thinking, unsuitable articles for home consumption. Yet her purpose held none the less strongly and steadily because excitement lessened. She refastened her tea gown, tied the streaming azure ribbons of it, patted bows and laces into place, walked the length of the room a time or two to recover her composure, then rang the bell. And, on the arrival of Charles,—irreproachably correct in dress and demeanour, his clean-shaven, sharp-featured, rakish countenance controlled to praiseworthy nullity of expression, she said:—
"The weather is abominable."
The man-servant set down the tray on a little table before her, turned out the corners of the napkin, deftly arranged the tea-things.
"It is a little dull, my lady."
"How is the glass?"
"Falling steadily, my lady."
"I cannot remain here."