She is very fair.  Her blue eyes have still retained their azure tint—­a strange thing at her age.  Her little hands and feet are as tiny now as when years ago they called all London town to look at them on her presentation to her Majesty.  She has indeed a charming face, a slight figure, and a temper that would shame the devil.

It isn’t a quick temper—­one can forgive that.  It is a temper that remembers—­remembers always, and that in a mild, ladylike sort of way destroys the one it fastens upon.  Yet she is a dainty creature; fragile, fair, and pretty, even now.  It is generally in these dainty, pretty, soulless creatures that the bitterest venom of all is to be found.

Her companion is different.  Marian Bethune is a tall woman, with a face not perhaps strictly handsome, but yet full of a beautiful diablerie that raises it above mere comeliness.  Her hair is red—­a rich red—­magnificent red hair that coils itself round her shapely head, and adds another lustre to the exquisite purity of her skin.  Her eyes have a good deal of red in them, too, mixed with a warm brown—­wonderful eyes that hold you when they catch you, and are difficult to forget.  Some women are born with strange charms; Marian Bethune is one of them.  To go through the world with such charms is a risk, for it must mean ruin or salvation, joy or desolation to many.  Most of all is it a risk to the possessor of those charms.

There have been some who have denied the right of Marian to the title beautiful.  But for the most part they have been women, and with regard to those others—­the male minority—­well, Mrs. Bethune could sometimes prove unkind, and there are men who do not readily forgive.  Her mouth is curious, large and full, but not easily to be understood.  Her eyes may speak, but her mouth is a sphinx.  Yet it is a lovely mouth, and the little teeth behind it shine like pearls.  For the rest, she is a widow.  She married very badly; went abroad with her husband; buried him in Montreal; and came home again.  Her purse is as slender as her figure, and not half so well worth possessing.  She says she is twenty-eight, and to her praise be it acknowledged that she speaks the truth.  Even good women sometimes stammer over this question!

“My sin, my sin?” demands she now gaily, smiling at Lady Rylton.

She flings up her lovely arms, and fastens them behind her head.  Her smile is full of mockery.

“Of course, my dear Marian, you cannot suppose that I have been blind to the fact that you and Maurice have—­for the past year—­been—­er——­”

“Philandering?” suggests Mrs. Bethune lightly.

She leans a little forward, her soft curved chin coming in recognition.

“I beg, Marian, you won’t be vulgar,” says Lady Rylton, fanning herself petulantly.  “It’s worse than being immoral.”

“Far, far worse!” Mrs. Bethune leans back in her chair, and laughs aloud.  “Well, I’m not immoral,” says she.