What do you think he meant by that, dear?'
'Everything,' I said, and took a silent decision to leave no stone
unturned to bring the thing off all right. I planned to leave them
alone in the rose drawing-room with its pink-shaded lights--Marion
looks her best under pink-shaded lights. She was thirty-seven, but
only looked thirty when she had her hair waved and wore her grey
_charmeuse_.
I, myself, prepared her for the interview. I dressed her hair
becomingly and clasped my matrix necklace around her throat. Then,
soon after George arrived, I excused myself on the plea of having an
article to write--which was perfect truth--and left them alone together.
Doesn't it give you a feeling of contentment when you have done a good
action? You are permeated with a sort of glow which comes from within.
After closing the drawing-room door on Marion and George, I sat down to
work in an atmosphere of righteousness. I could almost imagine there
must be the beginnings of a faint luminous disc around my head.
The subject of the article I now began to write was 'Should Women
Propose?' Treading carefully on the delicate ground of the Woman's
Page, I decided that they must do nothing that is so utterly
unfeminine. 'But there are many subtle little ways in which a woman
can convey to a man her preference for him,' I penned, 'without for a
moment overstepping the bounds of that maidenly reticence which is one
of the charms of----'
The door opened and Elizabeth entered.
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