“You’d better let me… freshen you up a bit.”

“Oh, very well. After all, if I want to captivate the knight in shining armor, I have to look my best, don’t I?” responded the vain beauty and she moved to the boudoir table and seated herself.

Her black hair was gathered in the back and held in a luxuriant cascade on her ivory neck by means of a flowered barette; she leaned forward to contemplate herself in the mirror and the amorous valley of her desirable breasts was widened by the gesture in the accentuated cut of her velvet gown.

Marie came forward and the mirror showed her demure and submissively appetizing loveliness in her dishabille.

She aided Marcia in deepening the pouting bow of her mouth with a flaming red, in applying; a subtle nuance of rouge to the debutante’s fearpallid cheeks, intensified the eye shadow, which this time was brown, to deepen the quality of Marcia’s liquid brown eyes and daintily penciled the arching, disdainful, fragile brows, artistically applying mascara to the long, quivering lashes which were this debutante’s most affectatiously use a charm to attract the attention of the male in her demi-vierge ruses of self glorification.

Then she applied an atomizer of jasmine to Marcia’s raven hair, her naked forearms and then, pausing, said, with lowered eyes and blushing face, “If… mam’sehle will permit… may I make a suggestion?”

“You seem to be running things your own way, Marie. Go ahead,” said Marcia indolently, turning her face so that she might see herself in arrogant profile in the oval mirror.

Could she have but seen the shadow that passed in Marie’s blue eyes… But the maid demurely murmured, “A shade of perfume at the armpits… and the neck, mam’selle, is most seductive… I have been told.”

“One would think you’d had a little experience in this sort of thing before,” said Marcia coldly, examining her scarlet nails with great show of absorption.

Behind her, Marie stiffened, her lips compressed and a faint suffusion of humiliation dawned on the carnation cheeks of the young girl.