It showed red, bright red, on her finger.
Mrs.Bunting grew chalky white, then recovered herself quickly.

In fact the colour rushed into her face, and she grew hot all over.
It was only a bottle of red ink she had upset--that was all! How could she have thought it was anything else?
It was the more silly of her--so she told herself in scornful condemnation--because she knew that the lodger used red ink.
Certain pages of Cruden's Concordance were covered with notes written in Mr.Sleuth's peculiar upright handwriting.

In fact in some places you couldn't see the margin, so closely covered was it with remarks and notes of interrogation.
Mr.Sleuth had foolishly placed his bottle of red ink in the chiffonnier--that was what her poor, foolish gentleman had done; and it was owing to her inquisitiveness, her restless wish to know things she would be none the better, none the happier, for knowing, that this accident had taken place.
She mopped up with her duster the few drops of ink which had fallen on the green carpet and then, still feeling, as she angrily told herself, foolishly upset she went once more into the back room.
It was curious that Mr.Sleuth possessed no notepaper.

She would have expected him to have made that one of his first purchases--the more so that paper is so very cheap, especially that rather dirty-looking grey Silurian paper.

Mrs.Bunting had once lived with a lady who always used two kinds of notepaper, white for her friends and equals, grey for those whom she called "common people." She, Ellen Green, as she then was, had always resented the fact.