She was
really beautiful. Vall thought: rather tall, slender, with dark eyes
and a creamy light-brown skin. She wore a black cloak, and, under it,
a black and silver evening gown. A single jewel twinkled in her black
hair. She could have very easily passed for a woman of his own race.
The housemaid and the butler were a couple of entirely different
articles. Both were about four or five generations from Fourth Level
Primitive savagery. The maid, in garishly cheap finery, was big-boned
and heavy-bodied, with red-brown hair; she looked like a member of one
of the northern European reindeer-herding peoples who had barely
managed to progress as far as the bow and arrow. The butler was
probably a mixture of half a dozen primitive races; he was wearing one
of his late master's evening suits, a bright mellow-pink, which was
distinctly unflattering to his complexion.
The sound-pickup was too far away to give him what they were saying,
but the butler and maid were waving their arms and protesting
vehemently. One of the detectives took the woman by the arm; she
jerked it loose and aimed a backhand slap at him.
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