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