"You were going out?" she asked.
"To the ball at Trefusis House." Still he avoided her eyes.
She laughed weakly.
"I should be there; I wonder if my lord is waiting for me!" Then she wished that she had not said that, for she saw him wince.
"Who else is in the house?" she asked abruptly.
"I do not know," his voice was low and laboured. "A woman downstairs, I believe, and some others."
"I met your man, he admitted me." She shook back her hair and flung open the mantle over her soft white dress; she drew her silk gloves off and laid them across her lap.
"Speak to me, Marius."
He seated himself at the spinet so that his profile was towards her; above the gold and pink glimmer of his brocaded coat, his face showed ill and suddenly and strangely worn. She, intensely observing him, thought that never had she seen him look so like her husband, and she hated him for it. She either hated him or loved him—and after all, it came to the same.