He was clean shaven, so that, as Adelaide loved to remember a friend of his had once suggested, his business competitors might take note of the stern lines of his mouth and chin.
She came in quickly, and shut the door behind her, and then dropping on her knees beside him, she laid her head against his heart.

He put out his hand, touched her face, and said: "Take off this veil." The taking off of Adelaide's veil was not a process to be accomplished ill-advisedly or lightly.

Lucie, her maid, had put it on, with much gathering together and looking into the glass over her mistress's shoulder, and it was held in place with shining pins and hair-pins.

She lifted her head, sank back upon her heels, and raised her arms to the offending cobweb of black meshes, while her husband went on in a tone not absolutely denuded of reproach: "You've been in some time." "Yes,"-- she stuck the first pin into the upholstery of the sofa,--"but Pringle told me Mathilde had a visitor, and I thought it was my duty to stop and be a little parental." "A young man ?" "Yes.

I forget his name--just like all these young men nowadays, alert and a little too much at his ease, but amusing in his way.