“Claudia, how sweet of you.” He came a little nearer to her and his nostrils dilated a little. No man is unmoved by the subtle flattery of a beautiful woman, and Claudia was looking her best that night.
“But,” said Claudia, with an abrupt change of voice, “I wish the man, the prisoner, had been more worth it. An awful poor thing, wasn’t he? Even if he didn’t murder the boy, he was only a wisp of straw, wasn’t he?”
“If men and women were all fine strong characters, my services wouldn’t be required, would they?”
Claudia looked thoughtful, and the brown eyes seemed to grow larger and brighter, as though some lamp were burning behind them. “No, I suppose you live on people’s weaknesses and lack of morals and stamina. Oh! dear, I don’t like to think that.”
“Well, don’t think it. Don’t let’s talk about my work. Tell me what you have been doing since I saw you last week?”
She was leaning a little forward, her elbow on her knee, and he could see the rise and fall of her bosom, the soft curves outlined by the clinging chiffon. And though he sat outwardly unmoved, something tingled within him and strained like a dog in a leash.
Claudia sat up with a shrug of her shoulders. It was a little trick of hers that suited her dark eyes. “I have been gloriously doing nothing in particular, the same things as I did last year, meeting much the same people and talking much the same talk. I spent two afternoons helping at the Duchess’s bazaar, and I smiled a continuous persuasive smile from ear to ear all the time, and I told a great many lies trying to sell things that were of an unutterable hideousness, and that nobody could want to buy. There was such a funny man came up to me. I tried to sell him a poker-work photo frame. ‘Isn’t it charming?’ I murmured. ‘Madam,’ he said, with a little twisty smile that began in his eyes and came down to his lips, ‘if you will frankly tell me what you think of it, I will purchase it. Your tone lacks conviction.’ ‘Sir,’ I replied, ‘frankly I think it one of the ugliest things I have ever seen and nothing would induce me to have it in my room.’ ‘How much?’ said he. And he bought it. I should like to meet him again. I am sure we should be friends.”
“I wonder what he did with it?” laughed Gilbert. “Perhaps he put his worst enemy into it.”
“If I ever see him again I shall ask him.... Have you heard about Pat? She has run away from Germany and come home. She says that speaking the Teutonic language all day was spoiling the shape of her mouth, and there was something in the air or the water that she was sure was making her figure spread! Isn’t she too quaint? She announces that she has learnt quite enough for the present, and she insists that mother shall bring her out.”