Ruthven, mounted
the miniature stairs with a whirl of her scented skirts, peeped into the
drawing-room, but continued mounting until she whipped into her own
apartments, separated from those of her lord and master by a locked
door.
That is, the door had been locked for a long, long time; but presently,
to her intense surprise and annoyance, it slowly opened, and a little
man appeared in slippered feet.
He was a little man, and plump, and at first glance his face appeared
boyish and round and quite guiltless of hair or of any hope of it.
But, as he came into the electric light, the hardness of his features
was apparent; he was no boy; a strange idea that he had never been
assailed some people. His face was puffy and pallid and faint blue
shadows hinted of closest shaving; and the line from the wing of the
nostrils to the nerveless corners of his thin, hard mouth had been
deeply bitten by the acid of unrest.
For the remainder he wore pale-rose pajamas under a silk-and-silver
kimona, an obi pierced with a jewelled scarf-pin; and he was smoking a
cigarette as thin as a straw.
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