"Just finish addressing those letters while you're waiting." "They're nearly finished," said Sonia.
"Nearly isn't quite.

Get on with them, can't you!" snapped Germaine.
Sonia went back to the writing-table; just the slightest deepening of the faint pink roses in her cheeks marked her sense of Germaine's rudeness.

After three years as companion to Germaine Gournay-Martin, she was well inured to millionaire manners; they had almost lost the power to move her.
Germaine dropped into a chair for twenty seconds; then flung out of it.
"Ten minutes to five!" she cried.

"Jacques is late.

It's the first time I've ever known him late." She went to the window, and looked across the wide stretch of meadow-land and woodland on which the chateau, set on the very crown of the ridge, looked down.