"He'd no right to tell you anything of the sort," she declared, "but in a sense I suppose it is true. He wants me to marry him. It's most fearfully unsettling. But that he should come to you! I wish he hadn't, Reginald."
"It appeared to me to be a quixotic action," the Marquis assented. "However, indirectly it has been conducive of good--it has brought me a great pleasure. I have missed you very much, Marcia. I am very happy to be here again, for however short a time."
"You are going back, then, to Mandeleys?"
"When we part, directly after luncheon. I have guests arriving there to-night--my sister and Grantham, and I believe some others. But after my talk with Borden, or rather his talk to me, I felt that I must see you."
"Well, I've missed you," she confessed frankly. "I seem to have had lots to do, and I have been going to the theatres, and I have quite made up my mind to write a play. But I have missed you.--Shall I go and put on my hat?"
"If you will," he answered. "We can talk in the car and at luncheon."
The Marquis watched her cross the room and sighed. At thirty-nine, he thought, she was wonderfully young. Her figure was a little more mature, but in all other respects she seemed only to have found poise and assurance with the passing years. He leaned back in his chair almost with a sense of luxury. He was back again in the atmosphere which had kept him young, the atmosphere which unconsciously had hung around him and kept him warm and contented--kept him, too, from looking over the edge into strange places. The room was deliciously feminine, notwithstanding a certain fascinating disorder. There were magazines, Reviews and illustrated papers everywhere in evidence, an open box of cigarettes upon the chimneypiece, an armful of flowers thrown loose upon the table, as well as the roses upon her desk. One of her gloves lay upon a chair by the side of a pile of proofs. It seemed to him that there were some new photographs on the mantelpiece, but his own, in the uniform of his county yeomanry, still occupied the central position. There were songs upon the piano; on the sideboard a silver cocktail shaker, and, as he noticed with a little pang, two glasses. Nevertheless, he sat there waiting in great content until Marcia came in, dressed for the street. She was followed by a servant with some ice upon a tray, and bottles.