“Yes, Monsieur le Marquis and mademoiselle were within,” the _Suisse_ admitted, with as near an approach to a welcoming smile as his dignified functions would allow (for Basil was cherished by inferiors, whether they belonged to his household or to those of other people), and with no decorum at all he ran into the hall, smiling gaily at that splendid official. “How do you do?” he was calling a second later from the foot of the great stairs, where he stood beside the servant who had taken his coat. Holding lightly to the banisters, Marguerite was coming down almost at a run, and there was a freshness, a delicacy, a something pure and untouched about her, that made his heart, his very soul, warm with infinite tenderness. Contrary to her habit, she was not in white, but wore a linen frock of clear azure, and on her bright hair a floppy garden-hat woven of pliant straw, around which a wide loose-knotted _bleu-de-ciel_ ribbon made her eyes bluer yet by sympathy. “How are you, you rarity!” she cried, taking the two last steps at a bound and stretching out both hands to him. The footman had disappeared, and, still holding his hands playfully, she drew him into a little salon opening straight from the hall. “Sit down, monseigneur!” she laughed, pointing to an arm-chair beside the sofa, on the edge of which she settled herself like a bird, her fingers interlaced, her delicious head cocked on one side, sparrow-wise. On a tabouret near by, and also between the two windows giving on the garden, stood big “buckets” of blue Sèvres, filled with blue hortensias--the exact blue of that negligently tied ribbon that seemed somehow to fascinate him. A ray of mote-laden sunshine gilded the Mazarine carpet about her tiny feet incased in silver-buckled white suède, and he smiled appreciatively. “New shoes?” he queried, glancing down at them. “Yes--isn’t that strange?” she smiled. “Old ones would scarcely suit this glorious weather. But how nice of you to come.... It has been an age....” Her lips were smiling, but her eyes had an unusual under-depth of seriousness, and he came to earth rather flatly. “Yes,” he said, brusquely, resuming the queer stiffness of attitude that had so deeply puzzled her when he had first adopted it. “It is quite a while since I came.” And for the second time he said, “How are you?” “So-so,” she answered, all liveliness of tone and gesture momentarily eclipsed. “One is always so-so, is one not, in this good old Paris?” “You should be far better than so-so, even here,” he stated, with astonishing severity, “you, whom the gods have showered with all blessings.” “Have a cigarette!” she shrugged, pushing from beneath the hortensias a silver box and match-stand. “No, thanks. I don’t care to smoke here. Your father says it oxidizes the ermines.”