The bedroom was sweet and fresh; after the manner of such rooms in country houses, a bowl of roses stood on a table; through the open window the air blew soft and clean. Grizel looked around with smiling satisfaction; then dropping her impedimenta on the bed, and wheeling round with a swift, unexpected movement, she faced her hostess, and nipped her chin between a thumb and forefinger. The two faces were close together: for a moment Katrine smiled, unconcerned and amused, but the honey-coloured eyes stared on, stared deep, stared with a long, unblinking intentness which brought the colour rushing to her cheeks. She twitched her head, the small fingers gripped with unexpected tenacity; she frowned and fumed, but the eyes stared relentlessly on. Finally she raised both hands and forced herself free. "Grizel, what _is_ it? Why are you staring? What in the world has happened?" "And that, my lamb," returned Grizel calmly, "is just precisely what I am axing myself!" She turned her back, and strolled nonchalantly across the rooms. CHAPTER SIX. When Grizel sailed down to dinner two hours later, it would have been difficult to recognise in her the pallid traveller of the afternoon. She was gorgeously attired in a robe of golden net covered with an embroidery of the same hue. The golden sheaf clung round her, and trailed heavily on the ground; encased in it her body appeared of an incredible slimness, yet from head to foot there was not one angle, not one harsh, unlovely line. Nymph, elf, fay, she was all rounded curve and dimple, from satin shoulder to arched and tiny feet. Though one might marvel that a human being could live in such wand-like form, _thin_ was a word which could never occur. Grizel was no more thin than Katrine herself. Her soft, mouse-brown hair was waved loosely back, and twisted in a fashion which preserved the shape of the head,--a rare and wonderful sight at a time when nine women out of ten carried a cushion-like appendage standing out many inches behind the ear. Grizel was too wise to disguise herself by any such freak of fashion; an artist would have noted with delight that she invariably respected the natural "line" of the body. Neck and arms were bare of ornament, her cheeks were still pale, but with a warm, cream-like tint which had no trace of ill-health, her honey-coloured eyes reflected the golden lights of her dress. The scarlet lips made the one contrasting note of colour.