You understand, don't you ?" "It was nothing, Miss Rita," protested Selina.

"I'd forgot it myself already." But Margaret insisted on assuring herself with her own eyes, got blood on her white gloves, had to change them.

As she descended she was putting on the fresh pair--a new pair.

How vastly more than even the normal is a man's disadvantage in a "serious" interview with a woman if she is putting on new gloves! She is perfectly free to seem occupied or not, as suits her convenience; and she can, by wrestling with the gloves, interrupt him without speech, distract his attention, fiddle his thoughts, give him a sense of imbecile futility, and all the time offer him no cause for resentment against her.

He himself seems in the wrong; she is merely putting On her gloves.
She was wrong in her guess that Arkwright had been at him.