'I daresay. I think we have been talking here long enough. Shall we go back?'

She had got her anger under again. She detested Mr. Van Torp, but she was honest enough to realise that for the present she had resented his saying that Lushington's book was probably trash, much more than what he had told her of his broken engagement. She turned and came back to the ventilator, meaning to go around to her chair, but he stopped her.

'Don't go yet, please!' he said, keeping beside her. 'Call me a disgusting brute if you like. I sha'n't mind it, and I daresay it's true in a kind of way. Business isn't very refining, you know, and it was the only education I got after I was sixteen. I'm sorry I called that book rubbish, for I'm sure it's not. I've met Mr. Lushington in England several times; he's very clever, and he's got a first-rate position. But you see I didn't like your refusing the book, after I'd taken so much trouble to get it for you. Perhaps if I hadn't thrown it overboard you'd take it, now that I've apologised. Would you?'

His tone had changed at last, as she had known it to change before in the course of an acquaintance that had lasted more than a year. He put the question almost humbly.

'I don't know,' Margaret answered, relenting a little in spite of herself. 'At all events I'm sorry I was so rude. I lost my temper.'

'It was very natural,' said Mr. Van Torp meekly, but not looking at her, 'and I know I deserved it. You really would let me give you the book now, if it were possible, wouldn't you?'

'Perhaps.' She thought that as there was no such possibility it was safe to say as much as that.

'I should feel so much better if you would,' he answered. 'I should feel as if you'd accepted my apology. Won't you say it, Madame Cordova?'

'Well—yes—since you wish it so much,' Margaret replied, feeling that she risked nothing.

'Here it is, then,' he said, to her amazement, producing the new novel from the pocket of his overcoat, and enjoying her surprise as he put it into her hand.

It looked like a trick of sleight of hand, and she took the book and stared at him, as a child stares at the conjuror who produces an apple out of its ear.

'But I saw you throw it away,' she said in a puzzled tone.

'I got two while I was about it,' said Mr. Van Torp, smiling without showing his teeth. 'It was just as easy and it didn't cost me any more.'

'I see! Thank you very much.'

She knew that she could not but keep the volume now, and in her heart she was glad to have it, for Lushington had written to her about it several times since she had been in America.

'Well, I'll leave you now,' said the millionaire, resuming his stony expression. 'I hope I've not kept you too long.'

Before Margaret had realised the idiotic conventionality of the last words her companion had disappeared and she was left alone. He had not gone back in the direction whence they had come, but had taken the deserted windward side of the ship, doubtless with the intention of avoiding the crowd.

Margaret stood still for some time in the lee of the ventilator, holding the novel in her hand and thinking. She wondered whether Mr. Van Torp had planned the whole scene, including the sacrifice of the novel. If he had not, it was certainly strange that he should have had the second copy ready in his pocket. Lushington had once told her that great politicians and great financiers were always great comedians, and now that she remembered the saying it occurred to her that Mr. Van Torp reminded her of a certain type of American actor, a type that has a heavy jaw and an aggressive eye, and strongly resembles the portraits of Daniel Webster. Now Daniel Webster had a wide reputation as a politician, but there is reason to believe that the numerous persons who lent him money and never got it back thought him a financier of undoubted ability, if not a comedian of talent. There were giants in those days.

The English girl, breathing the clean air of the ocean, felt as if something had left a bad taste in her mouth; and the famous young singer, who had seen in two years what a normal Englishwoman would neither see, nor guess at, nor wish to imagine in a lifetime, thought she understood tolerably well what the bad taste meant. Moreover, Margaret Donne was ashamed of what Margarita da Cordova knew, and Cordova had moments of sharp regret when she thought of the girl who had been herself, and had lived under good Mrs. Rushmore's protection, like a flower in a glass house.

She remembered, too, how Lushington and Mrs. Rushmore had warned her and entreated her not to become an opera-singer. She had taken her future into her own hands and had soon found out what it meant to be a celebrity on the stage; and she had seen only too clearly where she was classed by the women who would have been her companions and friends if she had kept out of the profession. She had learned by experience, too, how little real consideration she could expect from men of the world, and how very little she could really exact from such people as Mr. Van Torp; still less could she expect to get it from persons like Schreiermeyer, who looked upon the gifted men and women he engaged to sing as so many head of cattle, to be driven more or less hard according to their value, and to be turned out to starve the moment they were broken-winded. That fate is sure to overtake the best of them sooner or later. The career of a great opera-singer is rarely more than half as long as that of a great tragedian, and even when a primadonna or a tenor makes a fortune, the decline of their glory is far more sudden and sad than that of actors generally is. Lady Macbeth is as great a part as Juliet for an actress of genius, but there are no 'old parts' for singers; the soprano dare not turn into a contralto with advancing years, nor does the unapproachable Parsifal of eight-and-twenty turn into an incomparable Amfortas at fifty. For the actor, it often happens that the first sign of age is fatigue; in the singer's day, the first shadow is an eclipse, the first false note is disaster, the first breakdown is often a heart-rending failure that brings real tears to the eyes of younger comrades. The exquisite voice does not grow weak and pathetic and ethereal by degrees, so that we still love to hear it, even to the end; far more often it is suddenly flat or sharp by a quarter of a tone throughout whole acts, or it breaks on one note in a discordant shriek that is the end. Down goes the curtain then, in the middle of the great opera, and down goes the great singer for ever into tears and silence. Some of us have seen that happen, many have heard of it; few can think without real sympathy of such mortal suffering and distress.

Margaret realised all this, without any illusion, but there was another side to the question. There was success, glorious and far-reaching, and beyond her brightest dreams; there was the certainty that she was amongst the very first, for the deafening ring of universal applause was in her ears; and, above all, there was youth. Sometimes it seemed to her that she had almost too much, and that some dreadful thing must happen to her; yet if there were moments when she faintly regretted the calmer, sweeter life she might have led, she knew that she would have given that life up, over and over again, for the splendid joy of holding thousands spellbound while she sang. She had the real lyric artist's temperament, for that breathless silence of the many while her voice rang out alone, and trilled and died away to a delicate musical echo, was more to her than the roar of applause that could be heard through the walls and closed doors in the street outside. To such a moment as that Faustus himself would have cried 'Stay!' though the price of satisfied desire were his soul. And there had been many such moments in Cordova's life. They satisfied something much deeper than greedy vanity and stronger than hungry ambition. Call it what you will, according to the worth you set on such art, it is a longing which only artists feel, and to which only something in themselves can answer. To listen to perfect music is a feast for gods, but to be the living instrument beyond compare is to be a god oneself. Of our five senses, sight calls up visions, divine as well as earthly, but hearing alone can link body, mind, and soul with higher things, by the word and by the word made song. The mere memory of hearing when it is lost is still enough for the ends of genius; for the poet and the composer touch the blind most deeply, perhaps, when other senses do not count at all; but a painter who loses his sight is as helpless in the world of art as a dismasted ship in the middle of the ocean.

Some of these thoughts passed through Margaret's brain as she stood beside the ventilator with her friend's new book in her hand, and, although her reflections were not new to her, it was the first time she clearly understood that her life had made two natures out of her original self, and that the two did not always agree. She felt that she was not halved by the process, but doubled. She was two women instead of one, and each woman was complete in herself. She had not found this out by any elaborate self-study, for healthy people do not study themselves. She simply felt it, and she was sure it was true, because she knew that each of her two selves was able to do, suffer, and enjoy as much as any one woman could. The one might like what the other disliked and feared, but the contradiction was open and natural, not secret or morbid. The two women were called respectively Madame Cordova and Miss Donne. Miss Donne thought Madame Cordova very showy, and much too tolerant of vulgar things and people, if not a little touched with vulgarity herself. On the other hand, the brilliantly successful Cordova thought Margaret Donne a good girl, but rather silly. Miss Donne was very fond of Edmund Lushington, the writer, but the Primadonna had a distinct weakness for Constantine Logotheti, the Greek financier who lived in Paris, and who wore too many rubies and diamonds.

On two points, at least, the singer and the modest English girl agreed, for they both detested Rufus Van Torp, and each had positive proof that he was in love with her, if what he felt deserved the name.

For in very different ways she was really loved by Lushington and by Logotheti; and since she had been famous she had made the acquaintance of a good many very high and imposing personages, whose names are to be found in the first and second part of the Almanack de Gotha, in the Olympian circle of the reigning or the supernal regions of the Serene Mediatized, far above the common herd of dukes and princes; they had offered her a share in the overflowing abundance of their admirative protection; and then had seemed surprised, if not deeply moved, by the independence she showed in declining their intimacy. Some of them were frankly and contentedly cynical; some were of a brutality compared with which the tastes and manners of a bargee would have seemed ladylike; some were as refined and sensitive as English old maids, though less scrupulous and much less shy; the one was as generous as an Irish sailor, the next was as mean as a Normandy peasant; some had offered her rivers of rubies, and some had proposed to take her incognito for a drive in a cab, because it would be so amusing—and so inexpensive. Yet in their families and varieties they were all of the same species, all human and all subject to the ordinary laws of attraction and repulsion. Rufus Van Torp was not like them.

Neither of Margaret's selves could look upon him as a normal human being. At first sight there was nothing so very unusual in his face, certainly nothing that suggested a monster; and yet, whatever mood she chanced to be in, she could not be with him five minutes without being aware of something undefinable that always disturbed her profoundly, and sometimes became positively terrifying. She always felt the sensation coming upon her after a few moments, and when it had actually come she could hardly hide her repulsion till she felt, as to-day, that she must run from him, without the least consideration of pride or dignity. She might have fled like that before a fire or a flood, or from the scene of an earthquake, and more than once nothing had kept her in her place but her strong will and healthy nerves. She knew that it was like the panic that seizes people in the presence of an appalling disturbance of nature.

Doubtless, when she had talked with Mr. Van Torp just now, she had been disgusted by the indifferent way in which he spoke of poor Miss Bamberger's sudden death; it was still more certain that what he said about the book, and his very ungentlemanly behaviour in throwing it into the sea, had roused her justifiable anger. But she would have smiled at the thought that an exhibition of heartlessness, or the most utter lack of manners, could have made her wish to run away from any other man. Her life had accustomed her to people who had no more feeling than Schreiermeyer, and no better manners than Pompeo Stromboli. Van Torp might have been on his very best behaviour that morning, or at any of her previous chance meetings with him; sooner or later she would have felt that same absurd and unreasoning fear of him, and would have found it very hard not to turn and make her escape. His face was so stony and his eyes were so aggressive; he was always like something dreadful that was just going to happen.

Yet Margarita da Cordova was a brave woman, and had lately been called a heroine because she had gone on singing after that explosion till the people were quiet again; and Margaret Donne was a sensible girl, justly confident of being able to take care of herself where men were concerned. She stood still and wondered what there was about Mr. Van Torp that could frighten her so dreadfully.

After a little while she went quietly back to her chair, and sat down between Griggs and Miss More. The elderly man rose and packed her neatly in her plaid, and she thanked him. Miss More looked at her and smiled vaguely, as even the most intelligent people do sometimes. Then Griggs got into his own chair again and took up his book.

'Was that right of me?' he asked presently, so low that Miss More did not hear him speak.

'Yes,' Margaret answered, under her breath, 'but don't let me do it again, please.'

They both began to read, but after a time Margaret spoke to him again without turning her eyes.

'He wanted to ask me about that girl who died at the theatre,' she said, just audibly.

'Oh—yes!'

Griggs seemed so vague that Margaret glanced at him. He was looking at the inside of his right hand in a meditative way, as if it recalled something. If he had shown more interest in what she said she would have told him what she had just learned, about the breaking off of the engagement, but he was evidently absorbed in thought, while he slowly rubbed that particular spot on his hand, and looked at it again and again as if it recalled something.

Margaret did not resent his indifference, for he was much more than old enough to be her father; he was a man whom all younger writers looked upon as a veteran, he had always been most kind and courteous to her when she had met him, and she freely conceded him the right to be occupied with his own thoughts and not with hers. With him she was always Margaret Donne, and he seldom talked to her about music, or of her own work. Indeed, he so rarely mentioned music that she fancied he did not really care for it, and she wondered why he was so often in the house when she sang.

Mr. Van Torp did not show himself at luncheon, and Margaret began to hope that he would not appear on deck again till the next day. In the afternoon the wind dropped, the clouds broke, and the sun shone brightly. Little Ida, who was tired of doing crochet work, and had looked at all the books that had pictures, came and begged Margaret to walk round the ship with her. It would please her small child's vanity to show everybody that the great singer was willing to be seen walking up and down with her, although she was quite deaf, and could not hope ever to hear music. It was her greatest delight to be treated before every one as if she were just like other girls, and her cleverness in watching the lips of the person with her, without seeming too intent, was wonderful.

They went the whole length of the promenade deck, as if they were reviewing the passengers, bundled and packed in their chairs, and the passengers looked at them both with so much interest that the child made Margaret come all the way back again.

'The sea has a voice, too, hasn't it?' Ida asked, as they paused and looked over the rail.

She glanced up quickly for the answer, but Margaret did not find one at once.

'Because I've read poetry about the voices of the sea,' Ida explained. 'And in books they talk of the music of the waves, and then they say the sea roars, and thunders in a storm. I can hear thunder, you know. Did you know that I could hear thunder?'

Margaret smiled and looked interested.

'It bangs in the back of my head,' said the child gravely. 'But I should like to hear the sea thunder. I often watch the waves on the beach, as if they were lips moving, and I try to understand what they say. Of course, it's play, because one can't, can one? But I can only make out "Boom, ta-ta-ta-ta," getting quicker and weaker to the end, you know, as the ripples run up the sand.'

'It's very like what I hear,' Margaret answered.

'Is it really?' Little Ida was delighted. 'Perhaps it's a language after all, and I shall make it out some day. You see, until I know the language people are speaking, their lips look as if they were talking nonsense. But I'm sure the sea could not really talk nonsense all day for thousands of years.'

'No, I'm sure it couldn't!' Margaret was amused. 'But the sea is not alive,' she added.

'Everything that moves is alive,' the child said, 'and everything that is alive can make a noise, and the noise must mean something. If it didn't, it would be of no use, and everything is of some use. So there!'

Delighted with her own argument, the beautiful child laughed and showed her even teeth in the sun.

They were standing at the end of the promenade deck, which extended twenty feet abaft the smoking-room, and took the whole beam; above the latter, as in most modern ships, there was the boat deck, to the after-part of which passengers had access. Standing below, it was easy to see and talk with any one who looked over the upper rail.

Ida threw her head back and looked up as she laughed, and Margaret laughed good-naturedly with her, thinking how pretty she was. But suddenly the child's expression changed, her face grew grave, and her eyes fixed themselves intently on some point above. Margaret looked in the same direction, and saw that Mr. Van Torp was standing alone up there, leaning against the railing and evidently not seeing her, for he gazed fixedly into the distance; and as he stood there, his lips moved as if he were talking to himself.

Margaret gave a little start of surprise when she saw him, but the child watched him steadily, and a look of fear stole over her face. Suddenly she grasped Margaret's arm.

'Come away! Come away!' she cried in a low tone of terror.



CHAPTER IV

Margaret was sorry to say good-bye to Miss More and little Ida when the voyage was over, three days later. She was instinctively fond of children, as all healthy women are, and she saw very few of them in her wandering life. It is true that she did not understand them very well, for she had been an only child, brought up much alone, and children's ways are only to be learnt and understood by experience, since all children are experimentalists in life, and what often seems to us foolishness in them is practical wisdom of the explorative kind.

When Ida had pulled Margaret away from the railing after watching Mr. Van Torp while he was talking to himself, the singer had thought very little of it; and Ida never mentioned it afterwards. As for the millionaire, he was hardly seen again, and he made no attempt to persuade Margaret to take another walk with him on deck.

'Perhaps you would like to see my place,' he said, as he bade her good-bye on the tender at Liverpool. 'It used to be called Oxley Paddox, but I didn't like that, so I changed the name to Torp Towers. I'm Mr. Van Torp of Torp Towers. Sounds well, don't it?'

'Yes,' Margaret answered, biting her lip, for she wanted to laugh. 'It has a very lordly sound. If you bought a moor and a river in Scotland, you might call yourself the M'Torp of Glen Torp, in the same way.'

'I see you're laughing at me,' said the millionaire, with a quiet smile of a man either above or beyond ridicule. 'But it's all a game in a toy-shop anyway, this having a place in Europe. I buy a doll to play with when I have time, and I can call it what I please, and smash its head when I'm tired of it. It's my doll. It isn't any one's else's. The Towers is in Derbyshire if you want to come.'

Margaret did not 'want to come' to Torp Towers, even if the doll wasn't 'any one's else's.' She was sorry for any person or thing that had the misfortune to be Mr. Van Torp's doll, and she felt her inexplicable fear of him coming upon her while he was speaking. She broke off the conversation by saying good-bye rather abruptly.

'Then you won't come,' he said, in a tone of amusement.

'Really, you are very kind, but I have so many engagements.'

'Saturday to Monday in the season wouldn't interfere with your engagements. However, do as you like.'

'Thank you very much. Good-bye again.'

She escaped, and he looked after her, with an unsatisfied expression that was almost wistful, and that would certainly not have been in his face if she could have seen it.

Griggs was beside her when she went ashore.

'I had not much to do after all,' he said, glancing at Van Torp.

'No,' Margaret answered, 'but please don't think it was all imagination. I may tell you some day. No,' she said again, after a short pause, 'he did not make himself a nuisance, except that once, and now he has asked me to his place in Derbyshire.'

'Torp Towers,' Griggs observed, with a smile.

'Yes. I could hardly help laughing when he told me he had changed its name.'

'It's worth seeing,' said Griggs. 'A big old house, all full of other people's ghosts.'

'Ghosts?'

'I mean figuratively. It's full of things that remind one of the people who lived there. It has one of the oldest parks in England. Lots of pheasants, too—but that cannot last long.'

'Why not?'

'He won't let any one shoot them! They will all die of overcrowding in two or three years. His keepers are three men from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.'

'What a mad idea!' Margaret laughed. 'Is he a Buddhist?'

'No.' Paul Griggs knew something about Buddhism. 'Certainly not! He's eccentric. That's all.'

They were at the pier. Half-an-hour later they were in the train together, and there was no one else in the carriage. Miss More and little Ida had disappeared directly after landing, but Margaret had seen Mr. Van Torp get into a carriage on the window of which was pasted the label of the rich and great: 'Reserved.' She could have had the same privilege if she had chosen to ask for it or pay for it, but it irritated her that he should treat himself like a superior being. Everything he did either irritated her or frightened her, and she found herself constantly thinking of him and wishing that he would get out at the first station. Griggs was silent too, and Margaret thought he really might have taken some trouble to amuse her.

She had Lushington's book on her knee, for she had found it less interesting than she had expected, and was rather ashamed of not having finished it before meeting him, since it had been given to her. She thought he might come down as far as Rugby to meet her, and she was quite willing that he should find her with it in her hand. A literary man is always supposed to be flattered at finding a friend reading his last production, as if he did not know that the friend has probably grabbed the volume with undignified haste the instant he was on the horizon, with the intention of being discovered deep in it. Yet such little friendly frauds are sweet compared with the extremes of brutal frankness to which our dearest friends sometimes think it their duty to go with us, for our own good.

After a time Griggs spoke to her, and she was glad to hear his voice. She had grown to like him during the voyage, even more than she had ever thought probable. She had even gone so far as to wonder whether, if he had been twenty-five years younger, he might not have been the one man she had ever met whom she might care to marry, and she had laughed at the involved terms of the hypothesis as soon as she thought of it. Griggs had never been married, but elderly people remembered that there had been some romantic tale about his youth, when he had been an unknown young writer struggling for life as a newspaper correspondent.

'You saw the notice of Miss Bamberger's death, I suppose,' he said, turning his grey eyes to hers.

He had not alluded to the subject during the voyage.

'Yes,' Margaret answered, wondering why he broached it now.

'The notice said that she died of heart failure, from shock,' Griggs continued. 'I should like to know what you think about it, as you were with her when she died. Have you any idea that she may have died of anything else?'

'No.' Margaret was surprised. 'The doctor said it was that.'

'I know. I only wanted to have your own impression. I believe that when people die of heart failure in that way, they often make desperate efforts to explain what has happened, and go on trying to talk when they can only make inarticulate sounds. Do you remember if it was at all like that?'

'Not at all,' Margaret said. 'She whispered the last words she spoke, but they were quite distinct. Then she drew three or four deep breaths, and all at once I saw that she was dead, and I called the doctor from the next room.'

'I suppose that might be heart failure,' said Griggs thoughtfully. 'You are quite sure that you thought it was only that, are you not?'

'Only what?' Margaret asked with growing surprise.

'Only fright, or the result of having been half-suffocated in the crowd.'

'Yes, I think I am sure. What do you mean? Why do you insist so much?'

'It's of no use to tell other people,' said Griggs, 'but you may just as well know. I found her lying in a heap behind a door, where there could not have been much of a crowd.'

'Perhaps she had taken refuge there, to save herself,' Margaret suggested.

'Possibly. But there was another thing. When I got home I found that there was a little blood on the palm of my hand. It was the hand I had put under her waist when I lifted her.'

'Do you mean to say you think she was wounded?' Margaret asked, opening her eyes wide.

'There was blood on the inside of my hand,' Griggs answered, 'and I had no scratch to account for it. I know quite well that it was on the hand that I put under her waist—a little above the waist, just in the middle of her back.'

'But it would have been seen afterwards.'

'On the dark red silk she wore? Not if there was very little of it. The doctor never thought of looking for such a wound. Why should he? He had not the slightest reason for suspecting that the poor girl had been murdered.'

'Murdered?'

Margaret looked hard at Griggs, and then she suddenly shuddered from head to foot. She had never before had such a sensation; it was like a shock from an electric current at the instant when the contact is made, not strong enough to hurt, but yet very disagreeable. She felt it at the moment when her mind connected what Griggs was saying with the dying girl's last words, 'he did it'; and with little Ida's look of horror when she had watched Mr. Van Torp's lips while he was talking to himself on the boat-deck of the Leofric; and again, with the physical fear of the man that always came over her when she had been near him for a little while. When she spoke to Griggs again the tone of her voice had changed.

'Please tell me how it could have been done,' she said.

'Easily enough. A steel bodkin six or seven inches long, or even a strong hat-pin. It would be only a question of strength.'

Margaret remembered Mr. Van Torp's coarse hands, and shuddered again.

'How awful!' she exclaimed.

'One would bleed to death internally before long,' Griggs said.

'Are you sure?'

'Yes. That is the reason why the three-cornered blade for duelling swords was introduced in France thirty years ago. Before that, men often fought with ordinary foils filed to a point, and there were many deaths from internal hemorrhage.'

'What odd things you always know! That would be just like being run through with a bodkin, then?'

'Very much the same.'

'But it would have been found out afterwards,' Margaret said, 'and the papers would have been full of it.'

'That does not follow,' Griggs answered. 'The girl was an only child, and her mother had been divorced and married again. She lived alone with her father, and he probably was told the truth. But Isidore Bamberger is not the man to spread out his troubles before the public in the newspapers. On the contrary, if he found out that his daughter had been killed—supposing that she was—he probably made up his mind at once that the world should not know it till he had caught the murderer. So he sent for the best detective in America, put the matter in his hands, and inserted a notice of his daughter's death that agreed with what the doctor had said. That would be the detective's advice, I'm sure, and probably Van Torp approved of it.'

'Mr. Van Torp? Do you think he was told about it? Why?'

'First, because Bamberger is Van Torp's banker, broker, figure-head, and general representative on earth,' answered Griggs. 'Secondly, because Van Torp was engaged to marry the girl.'

'The engagement was broken off,' Margaret said.

'How do you know that?' asked Griggs quickly.

'Mr. Van Torp told me, on the steamer. They had broken it off that very day, and were going to let it be known the next morning. He told me so, that afternoon when I walked with him.'

'Really!'

Griggs was a little surprised, but as he did not connect Van Torp with the possibility that Miss Bamberger had been murdered, his thoughts did not dwell on the broken engagement.

'Why don't you try to find out the truth?' Margaret asked rather anxiously. 'You know so many people everywhere—you have so much experience.'

'I never had much taste for detective work,' answered the literary man, 'and besides, this is none of my business. But Bamberger and Van Torp are probably both of them aware by this time that I found the girl and carried her to the manager's room, and when they are ready to ask me what I know, or what I remember, the detective they are employing will suddenly appear to me in the shape of a new acquaintance in some out-of-the-way place, who will go to work scientifically to make me talk to him. He will very likely have a little theory of his own, to the effect that since it was I who brought Miss Bamberger to Schreiermeyer's room, it was probably I who killed her, for some mysterious reason!'

'Shall you tell him about the drop of blood on your hand?'

'Without the slightest hesitation. But not until I am asked, and I shall be very glad if you will not speak of it.'

'I won't,' Margaret said; 'but I wonder why you have told me if you mean to keep it a secret!'

The veteran man of letters turned his sad grey eyes to hers, while his lips smiled.

'The world is not all bad,' he said. 'All men are not liars, and all women do not betray confidence.'

'It's very good to hear a man like you say that,' Margaret answered. 'It means something.'

'Yes,' assented Griggs thoughtfully. 'It means a great deal to me to be sure of it, now that most of my life is lived.'

'Were you unhappy when you were young?'

She asked the question as a woman sometimes does who feels herself strongly drawn to a man much older than she. Griggs did not answer at once, and when he spoke his voice was unusually grave, and his eyes looked far away.

'A great misfortune happened to me,' he said. 'A great misfortune,' he repeated slowly, after a pause, and his tone and look told Margaret how great that calamity had been better than a score of big words.

'Forgive me,' Margaret said softly; 'I should have known.'

'No,' Griggs answered after a moment. 'You could not have known. It happened very long ago, perhaps ten years before you were born.'

Again he turned his sad grey eyes to hers, but no smile lingered now about the rather stern mouth. The two looked at each other quietly for five or six seconds, and that may seem a long time. When Margaret turned away from the elderly man's more enduring gaze, both felt that there was a bond of sympathy between them which neither had quite acknowledged till then. There was silence after that, and Margaret looked out of the window, while her hand unconsciously played with the book on her knee, lifting the cover a little and letting it fall again and again.

Suddenly she turned to Griggs once more and held the book out to him with a smile.

'I'm not an autograph-hunter,' she said, 'but will you write something on the fly-leaf? Just a word or two, without your name, if you like. Do you think I'm very sentimental?'

She smiled again, and he took the book from her and produced a pencil.

'It's a book I shall not throw away,' she went on, 'because the man who wrote it is a great friend of mine, and I have everything he has ever written. So, as I shall keep it, I want it to remind me that you and I grew to know each other better on this voyage.'

It occurred to the veteran that while this was complimentary to himself it was not altogether promising for Lushington, who was the old friend in question. A woman who loves a man does not usually ask another to write a line in that man's book. Griggs set the point of the pencil on the fly-leaf as if he were going to write; but then he hesitated, looked up, glanced at Margaret, and at last leaned back in the seat, as if in deep thought.

'I didn't mean to give you so much trouble,' Margaret said, still smiling. 'I thought it must be so easy for a famous author like you to write half-a-dozen words!'

'A "sentiment" you mean!' Griggs laughed rather contemptuously, and then was grave again.

'No!' Margaret said, a little disappointed. 'You did not understand me. Don't write anything at all. Give me back the book.'

She held out her hand for it; but as if he had just made up his mind, he put his pencil to the paper again, and wrote four words in a small clear hand. She leaned forwards a little to see what he was writing.

'You know enough Latin to read that,' he said, as he gave the book back to her.

She read the words aloud, with a puzzled expression.

'"Credo in resurrectionem mortuorum."' She looked at him for some explanation.

'Yes,' he said, answering her unspoken question. '"I believe in the resurrection of the dead."'

'It means something especial to you—is that it?'

'Yes.' His eyes were very sad again as they met hers.

'My voice?' she asked. 'Some one—who sang like me? Who died?'

'Long before you were born,' he answered gently.

There was another little pause before she spoke again, for she was touched.

'Thank you,' she said. 'Thank you for writing that.'



CHAPTER V

Mr. Van Torp arrived in London alone, with one small valise, for he had sent his man with his luggage to the place in Derbyshire. At Euston a porter got him a hansom, and he bargained with the cabman to take him and his valise to the Temple for eighteenpence, a sum which, he explained, allowed sixpence for the valise, as the distance could not by any means be made out to be more than two miles.

Such close economy was to be expected from a millionaire, travelling incognito; what was more surprising was that, when the cab stopped before a door in Hare Court and Mr. Van Torp received his valise from the roof of the vehicle, he gave the man half-a-crown, and said it was 'all right.'

'Now, my man,' he observed, 'you've not only got an extra shilling, to which you had no claim whatever, but you've had the pleasure of a surprise which you could not have bought for that money.'

The cabman grinned as he touched his hat and drove away, and Mr. Van Torp took his valise in one hand and his umbrella in the other and went up the dark stairs. He went up four flights without stopping to take breath, and without so much as glancing at any of the names painted in white letters on the small black boards beside the doors on the right and left of each landing.

The fourth floor was the last, and though the name on the left had evidently been there a number of years, for the white lettering was of the tint of a yellow fog, it was still quite clear and legible.

MR.I. BAMBERGER.

That was the name, but the millionaire did not look at it any more than he had looked at the others lower down. He knew them all by heart. He dropped his valise, took a small key from his pocket, opened the door, picked up his valise again, and, as neither hand was free, he shut the door with his heel as he passed in, and it slammed behind him, sending dismal echoes down the empty staircase.

The entry was almost quite dark, for it was past six o'clock in the afternoon, late in March, and the sky was overcast; but there was still light enough to see in the large room on the left into which Mr. Van Torp carried his things.

It was a dingy place, poorly furnished, but some one had dusted the table, the mantelpiece, and the small bookcase, and the fire was laid in the grate, while a bright copper kettle stood on a movable hob. Mr. Van Torp struck a match and lighted the kindling before he took off his overcoat, and in a few minutes a cheerful blaze dispelled the gathering gloom. He went to a small old-fashioned cupboard in a corner and brought from it a chipped cup and saucer, a brown teapot, and a cheap japanned tea-caddy, all of which he set on the table; and as soon as the fire burned brightly, he pushed the movable hob round with his foot till the kettle was over the flame of the coals. Then he took off his overcoat and sat down in the shabby easy-chair by the hearth, to wait till the water boiled.

His proceedings, his manner, and his expression would have surprised the people who had been his fellow-passengers on the Leofric, and who imagined Mr. Van Torp driving to an Olympian mansion, somewhere between Constitution Hill and Sloane Square, to be received at his own door by gravely obsequious footmen in plush, and to drink Imperial Chinese tea from cups of Old Saxe, or Bleu du Roi, or Capo di Monte.

Paul Griggs, having tea and a pipe in a quiet little hotel in Clarges Street, would have been much surprised if he could have seen Rufus Van Torp lighting a fire for himself in that dingy room in Hare Court. Madame Margarita da Cordova, waiting for an expected visitor in her own sitting-room, in her own pretty house in Norfolk Crescent, would have been very much surprised indeed. The sight would have plunged her into even greater uncertainty as to the man's real character, and it is not unlikely that she would have taken his mysterious retreat to be another link in the chain of evidence against him which already seemed so convincing. She might naturally have wondered, too, what he had felt when he had seen that board beside the door, and she could hardly have believed that he had gone in without so much as glancing at the yellowish letters that formed the name of Bamberger.

But he seemed quite at home where he was, and not at all uncomfortable as he sat before the fire, watching the spout of the kettle, his elbows on the arms of the easy-chair and his hands raised before him, with the finger-tips pressed against each other, in the attitude which, with most men, means that they are considering the two sides of a question that is interesting without being very important.

Perhaps a thoughtful observer would have noticed at once that there had been no letters waiting for him when he had arrived, and would have inferred either that he did not mean to stay at the rooms twenty-four hours, or that, if he did, he had not chosen to let any one know where he was.

Presently it occurred to him that there was no longer any light in the room except from the fire, and he rose and lit the gas. The incandescent light sent a raw glare into the farthest corners of the large room, and just then a tiny wreath of white steam issued from the spout of the kettle. This did not escape Mr. Van Torp's watchful eye, but instead of making tea at once he looked at his watch, after which he crossed the room to the window and stood thoughtfully gazing through the panes at the fast disappearing outlines of the roofs and chimney-pots which made up the view when there was daylight outside. He did not pull down the shade before he turned back to the fire, perhaps because no one could possibly look in.

But he poured a little hot water into the teapot, to scald it, and went to the cupboard and got another cup and saucer, and an old tobacco-tin of which the dingy label was half torn off, and which betrayed by a rattling noise that it contained lumps of sugar. The imaginary thoughtful observer already mentioned would have inferred from all this that Mr. Van Torp had resolved to put off making tea until some one came to share it with him, and that the some one might take sugar, though he himself did not; and further, as it was extremely improbable, on the face of it, that an afternoon visitor should look in by a mere chance, in the hope of finding some one in Mr. Isidore Bamberger's usually deserted rooms, on the fourth floor of a dark building in Hare Court, the observer would suppose that Mr. Van Torp was expecting some one to come and see him just at that hour, though he had only landed in Liverpool that day, and would have been still at sea if the weather had been rough or foggy.

All this might have still further interested Paul Griggs, and would certainly have seemed suspicious to Margaret, if she could have known about it.

Five minutes passed, and ten, and the kettle was boiling furiously, and sending out a long jet of steam over the not very shapely toes of Mr. Van Torp's boots, as he leaned back with his feet on the fender. He looked at his watch again and apparently gave up the idea of waiting any longer, for he rose and poured out the hot water from the teapot into one of the cups, as a preparatory measure, and took off the lid to put in the tea. But just as he had opened the caddy, he paused and listened. The door of the room leading to the entry was ajar, and as he stood by the table he had heard footsteps on the stairs, still far down, but mounting steadily.

He went to the outer door and listened. There was no doubt that somebody was coming up; any one not deaf could have heard the sound. It was more strange that Mr. Van Torp should recognise the step, for the rooms on the other side of the landing were occupied, and a stranger would have thought it quite possible that the person who was coming up should be going there. But Mr. Van Torp evidently knew better, for he opened his door noiselessly and stood waiting to receive the visitor. The staircase below was dimly lighted by gas, but there was none at the upper landing, and in a few seconds a dark form appeared, casting a tall shadow upwards against the dingy white paint of the wall. The figure mounted steadily and came directly to the open door—a lady in a long black cloak that quite hid her dress. She wore no hat, but her head was altogether covered by one of those things which are neither hoods nor mantillas nor veils, but which serve women for any of the three, according to weather and circumstances. The peculiarity of the one the lady wore was that it cast a deep shadow over her face.

'Come in,' said Mr. Van Torp, withdrawing into the entry to make way.

She entered and went on directly to the sitting-room, while he shut the outer door. Then he followed her, and shut the second door behind him. She was standing before the fire spreading her gloved hands to the blaze, as if she were cold. The gloves were white, and they fitted very perfectly. As he came near, she turned and held out one hand.

'All right?' he inquired, shaking it heartily, as if it had been a man's.

A sweet low voice answered him.

'Yes—all right,' it said, as if nothing could ever be wrong with its possessor. 'But you?' it asked directly afterwards, in a tone of sympathetic anxiety.

'I? Oh—well—' Mr. Van Torp's incomplete answer might have meant anything, except that he too was 'all right.'

'Yes,' said the lady gravely. 'I read the telegram the next day. Did you get my cable? I did not think you would sail.'

'Yes, I got your cable. Thank you. Well—I did sail, you see. Take off your things. The water's boiling and we'll have tea in a minute.'

The lady undid the fastening at her throat so that the fur-lined cloak opened and slipped a little on her white shoulders. She held it in place with one hand, and with the other she carefully turned back the lace hood from her face, so as not to disarrange her hair. Mr. Van Torp was making tea, and he looked up at her over the teapot.

'I dressed for dinner,' she said, explaining.

'Well,' said Mr. Van Torp, looking at her, 'I should think you did!'

There was real admiration in his tone, though it was distinctly reluctant.

'I thought it would save half an hour and give us more time together,' said the lady simply.

She sat down in the shabby easy-chair, and as she did so the cloak slipped and lay about her waist, and she gathered one side of it over her knees. Her gown was of black velvet, without so much as a bit of lace, except at the sleeves, and the only ornament she wore was a short string of very perfect pearls clasped round her handsome young throat.

She was handsome, to say the least. If tired ghosts of departed barristers were haunting the dingy room in Hare Court that night, they must have blinked and quivered for sheer pleasure at what they saw, for Mr. Van Torp's visitor was a very fine creature to look at; and if ghosts can hear, they heard that her voice was sweet and low, like an evening breeze and flowing water in a garden, even in the Garden of Eden.

She was handsome, and she was young; and above all she had the freshness, the uncontaminated bloom, the subdued brilliancy of nature's most perfect growing things. It was in the deep clear eyes, in the satin sheen of her bare shoulders under the sordid gaslight; it was in the strong smooth lips, delicately shaded from salmon colour to the faintest peach-blossom; it was in the firm oval of her face, in the well-modelled ear, the straight throat and the curving neck; it was in her graceful attitude; it was everywhere. 'No doubt,' the ghosts might have said, 'there are more beautiful women in England than this one, but surely there is none more like a thoroughbred and a Derby winner!'

'You take sugar, don't you?' asked Mr. Van Torp, having got the lid off the old tobacco-tin with some difficulty, for it had developed an inclination to rust since it had last been moved.

'One lump, please,' said the thoroughbred, looking at the fire.

'I thought I remembered,' observed the millionaire. 'The tea's good,' he added, 'and you'll have to excuse the cup. And there's no cream.'

'I'll excuse anything,' said the lady, 'I'm so glad to be here!'

'Well, I'm glad to see you too,' said Mr. Van Torp, giving her the cup. 'Crackers? I'll see if there're any in the cupboard. I forgot.'

He went to the corner again and found a small tin of biscuits, which he opened and examined under gaslight.

'Mouldy,' he observed. 'Weevils in them, too. Sorry. Does it matter much?'

'Nothing matters,' answered the lady, sweet and low. 'But why do you put them away if they are bad? It would be better to burn them and be done with it.'

He was taking the box back to the cupboard.

'I suppose you're right,' he said reluctantly. 'But it always seems wicked to burn bread, doesn't it?'

'Not when it's weevilly,' replied the thoroughbred, after sipping the hot tea.

He emptied the contents of the tin upon the coal fire, and the room presently began to smell of mouldy toast.

'Besides,' he said, 'it's cruel to burn weevils, I suppose. If I'd thought of that, I'd have left them alone. It's too late now. They're done for, poor beasts! I'm sorry. I don't like to kill things.'

He stared thoughtfully at the already charred remains of the holocaust, and shook his head a little. The lady sipped her tea and looked at him quietly, perhaps affectionately, but he did not see her.

'You think I'm rather silly sometimes, don't you?' he asked, still gazing at the fire.

'No,' she answered at once. 'It's never silly to be kind, even to weevils.'

'Thank you for thinking so,' said Mr. Van Torp, in an oddly humble tone, and he began to drink his own tea.

If Margaret Donne could have suddenly found herself perched among the chimney-pots on the opposite roof, and if she had then looked at his face through the window, she would have wondered why she had ever felt a perfectly irrational terror of him. It was quite plain that the lady in black velvet had no such impression.

'You need not be so meek,' she said, smiling.

She did not laugh often, but sometimes there was a ripple in her fresh voice that would turn a man's head. Mr. Van Torp looked at her in a rather dull way.

'I believe I feel meek when I'm with you. Especially just now.'

He swallowed the rest of his tea at a gulp, set the cup on the table, and folded his hands loosely together, his elbows resting on his knees; in this attitude he leaned forward and looked at the burning coals. Again his companion watched his hard face with affectionate interest.

'Tell me just how it happened,' she said. 'I mean, if it will help you at all to talk about it.'

'Yes. You always help me,' he answered, and then paused. 'I think I should like to tell you the whole thing,' he added after an instant. 'Somehow, I never tell anybody much about myself.'

'I know.'

She bent her handsome head in assent. Just then it would have been very hard to guess what the relations were between the oddly assorted pair, as they sat a little apart from each other before the grate. Mr. Van Torp was silent now, as if he were making up his mind how to begin.

In the pause, the lady quietly held out her hand towards him. He saw without turning further, and he stretched out his own. She took it gently, and then, without warning, she leaned very far forward, bent over it and touched it with her lips. He started and drew it back hastily. It was as if the leaf of a flower had settled upon it, and had hovered an instant, and fluttered away in a breath of soft air.

'Please don't!' he cried, almost roughly. 'There's nothing to thank me for. I've often told you so.'

But the lady was already leaning back in the old easy-chair again as if she had done nothing at all unusual.

'It wasn't for myself,' she said. 'It was for all the others, who will never know.'

'Well, I'd rather not,' he answered. 'It's not worth all that. Now, see here! I'm going to tell you as near as I can what happened, and when you know you can make up your mind. You never saw but one side of me anyhow, but you've got to see the other sooner or later. No, I know what you're going to say—all that about a dual nature, and Jekyll and Hyde, and all the rest of it. That may be true for nervous people, but I'm not nervous. Not at all. I never was. What I know is, there are two sides to everybody, and one's always the business side. The other may be anything. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad. Sometimes it cares for a woman, sometimes it's a collector of art things, Babylonian glass, and Etruscan toys and prehistoric dolls. It may gamble, or drink, or teach a Sunday school, or read Dante, or shoot, or fish, or anything that's of no use. But one side's always the business side. That's certain.'

Mr. Van Torp paused, and looked at his companion's empty cup. Seeing that he was going to get up in order to give her more, she herself rose quickly and did it for herself. He sat still and watched her, probably because the business side of his nature judged that he could be of no use. The fur-lined cloak was now lying in the easy-chair, and there was nothing to break the sweeping lines of the black velvet from her dazzling shoulders to her waist, to her knee, to her feet. Mr. Van Torp watched her in silence, till she sat down again.

'You know me well enough to understand that,' he said, going on. 'My outside's my business side, and that's what matters most. Now the plain truth is this. My engagement to Miss Bamberger was just a business affair. Bamberger thought of it first, and suggested it to me, and he asked her if she'd mind being engaged to me for a few weeks; and she said she wouldn't provided she wasn't expected to marry me. That was fair and square, anyway, on both sides. Wasn't it?'

'It depends on why you did it,' said the lady, going to the point directly.

'That was the business side,' answered her companion. 'You see, a big thing like the Nickel Trust always has a lot of enemies, besides a heap of people who want to get some of it cheap. This time they put their heads together and got up one of the usual stories. You see, Isidore H. Bamberger is the president and I only appear as a director, though most of it's mine. So they got up a story that he was operating on his own account to get behind me, and that we were going to quarrel over it, and there was going to be a slump, and people began to believe it. It wasn't any use talking to the papers. We soon found that out. Sometimes the public won't believe anything it's told, and sometimes it swallows faster than you can feed to it. I don't know why, though I've had a pretty long experience, but I generally do know which state it's in. I feel it. That's what's called business ability. It's like fishing. Any old fisherman can judge in half an hour whether the fish are going to bite all day or not. If he's wrong once, he'll be right a hundred times. Well, I felt talking was no good, and so did Bamberger, and the shares began to go down before the storm. If the big slump had come there'd have been a heap of money lost. I don't say we didn't let the shares drop a couple of points further than they needed to, and Bamberger bought any of it that happened to be lying around, and the more he bought the quicker it wanted to go down, because people said there was going to be trouble and an investigation. But if we'd gone on, lots of people would have been ruined, and yet we didn't just see how to stop it sharp, till Bamberger started his scheme. Do you understand all that?'

The lady nodded gravely.

'You make it clear,' she said.

'Well, I thought it was a good scheme,' continued her companion, 'and as the girl said she didn't mind, we told we were engaged. That settled things pretty quick. The shares went up again in forty-eight hours, and as we'd bought for cash we made the points, and the other people were short and lost. But when everything was all right again we got tired of being engaged, Miss Bamberger and I; and besides, there was a young fellow she'd a fancy for, and he kept writing to her that he'd kill himself, and that made her nervous, you see, and she said if it went on another day she knew she'd have appendicitis or something. So we were going to announce that the engagement was broken. And the very night before—'

He paused. Not a muscle of the hard face moved, there was not a change in the expression of the tremendous mouth, there was not a tremor in the tone; but the man kept his eyes steadily on the fire.

'Oh, well, she's dead now, poor thing,' he said presently. 'And that's what I wanted to tell you. I suppose it's not a very pretty story, is it? But I'll tell you one thing. Though we made a little by the turn of the market, we saved a heap of small fry from losing all they'd put in. If we'd let the slump come and then bought we should have made a pile; but then we might have had difficulty in getting the stock up to anywhere near par again for some time.'

'Besides,' said the lady quietly, 'you would not have ruined all those little people if you could help it.'

'You think I wouldn't?' He turned his eyes to her now.

'I'm sure you would not,' said the lady with perfect confidence.

'I don't know, I'm sure,' answered Mr. Van Torp in a doubtful tone. 'Perhaps I wouldn't. But it would only have been business if I had. It's not as if Bamberger and I had started a story on purpose about our quarrelling in order to make things go down. I draw the line there. That's downright dishonest, I call it. But if we'd just let things slide and taken advantage of what happened, it would only have been business after all. Except for that doubt about getting back to par,' he added, as an afterthought. 'But then I should have felt whether it was safe or not.'

'Then why did you not let things slide, as you call it?'

'I don't know, I'm sure. Maybe I was soft-hearted. We don't always know why we do things in business. There's a great deal more in the weather where big money is moving than you might think. For instance, there was never a great revolution in winter. But as for making people lose their money, those who can't keep it ought not to have it. They're a danger to society, and half the time it's they who upset the market by acting like lunatics. They get a lot of sentimental pity sometimes, those people; but after all, if they didn't try to cut in without capital, and play the game without knowing the rules, business would be much steadier and there would be fewer panics. They're the people who get frightened and run, not we. The fact is, they ought never to have been there. That's why I believe in big things myself.'

He paused, having apparently reached the end of his subject.

'Were you with the poor girl when she died?' asked the lady presently.

'No. She'd dined with a party and was in their box, and they were the last people who saw her. You read about the explosion. She bolted from the box in the dark, I was told, and as she couldn't be found afterwards they concluded she had rushed out and taken a cab home. It seemed natural, I suppose.'

'Who found her at last?'

'A man called Griggs—the author, you know. He carried her to the manager's room, still alive. They got a doctor, and as she wanted to see a woman, they sent for Cordova, the singer, from her dressing-room, and the girl died in her arms. They said it was heart failure, from shock.'

'It was very sad.'

'I'm sorry for poor Bamberger,' said Mr. Van Torp thoughtfully. 'She was his only child, and he doted on her. I never saw a man so cut up as he looked. I wanted to stay, but he said the mere sight of me drove him crazy, poor fellow, and as I had business over here and my passage was taken, I just sailed. Sometimes the kindest thing one can do is to get out. So I did. But I'm very sorry for him. I wish I could do anything to make it easier for him. It was nobody's fault, I suppose, though I do think the people she was with might have prevented her from rushing out in the dark.'

'They were frightened themselves. How could any one be blamed for her death?'

'Exactly. But if any one could be made responsible, I know Bamberger would do for him in some way. He's a resentful sort of man if any one does him an injury. Blood for blood is Bamberger's motto, every time. One thing I'm sure of. He'll run down whoever was responsible for that explosion, and he'll do for him, whoever he is, if it costs one million to get a conviction. I wouldn't like to be the fellow!'

'I can understand wishing to be revenged for the death of one's only child,' said the lady thoughtfully. 'Cannot you?'

The American turned his hard face to her.

'Yes,' he said, 'I can. It's only human, after all.'

She sighed and looked into the fire. She was married, but she was childless, and that was a constant regret to her. Mr. Van Torp knew it and understood.

'To change the subject,' he said cheerfully, 'I suppose you need money, don't you?'

'Oh yes! Indeed I do!'

Her momentary sadness had already disappeared, and there was almost a ripple in her tone again as she answered.

'How much?' asked the millionaire smiling.

She shook her head and smiled too; and as she met his eyes she settled herself and leaned far back in the shabby easy-chair. She was wonderfully graceful and good to look at in her easy attitude.

'I'm afraid to tell you how much!' She shook her head again, as she answered.

'Well,' said Mr. Van Torp in an encouraging tone, 'I've brought some cash in my pocket, and if it isn't enough I'll get you some more to-morrow. But I won't give you a cheque. It's too compromising. I thought of that before I left New York, so I brought some English notes from there.'

'How thoughtful you always are for me!'

'It's not much to do for a woman one likes. But I'm sorry if I've brought too little. Here it is, anyway.'

He produced a large and well-worn pocket-book, and took from it a small envelope, which he handed to her.

'Tell me how much more you'll need,' he said, 'and I'll give it to you to-morrow. I'll put the notes between the pages of a new book and leave it at your door. He wouldn't open a package that was addressed to you from a bookseller's, would he?'

'No,' answered the lady, her expression changing a little, 'I think he draws the line at the bookseller.'

'You see, this was meant for you,' said Mr. Van Torp. 'There are your initials on it.'

She glanced at the envelope, and saw that it was marked in pencil with the letters M.L. in one corner.

'Thank you,' she said, but she did not open it.

'You'd better count the notes,' suggested the millionaire. 'I'm open to making mistakes myself.'

The lady took from the envelope a thin flat package of new Bank of England notes, folded together in four. Without separating them she glanced carelessly at the first, which was for a hundred pounds, and then counted the others by the edges. She counted four after the first, and Mr. Van Torp watched her face with evident amusement.

'You need more than that, don't you?' he asked, when she had finished.

'A little more, perhaps,' she said quietly, though she could not quite conceal her disappointment, as she folded the notes and slipped them into the envelope again. 'But I shall try to make this last. Thank you very much.'

'I like you,' said Mr. Van Torp. 'You're the real thing. They'd call you a chief's daughter in the South Seas. But I'm not so mean as all that. I only thought you might need a little cash at once. That's all.'

A loud knocking at the outer door prevented the lady from answering.

She looked at Mr. Van Torp in surprise.

'What's that?' she asked, rather anxiously.

'I don't know,' he answered. 'He couldn't guess that you were here, could he?'

'Oh no! That's quite out of the question!'

'Then I'll open the door,' said the millionaire, and he left the sitting-room.

The lady had not risen, and she still leaned back in her seat. She idly tapped the knuckles of her gloved hand with the small envelope.

The knocking was repeated, she heard the outer door opened, and the sound of voices followed directly.

'Oh!' Mr. Van Torp exclaimed in a tone of contemptuous surprise, 'it's you, is it? Well, I'm busy just now. I can't see you till to-morrow.'

'My business will not keep till to-morrow,' answered an oily voice in a slightly foreign accent.

At the very first syllables the lady rose quickly to her feet, and resting one hand on the table she leant forward in the direction of the door, with an expression that was at once eager and anxious, and yet quite fearless.

'What you call your business is going to wait my convenience,' said Mr. Van Torp. 'You'll find me here to-morrow morning until eleven o'clock.'

From the sounds the lady judged that the American now attempted to shut the door in his visitor's face, but that he was hindered and that a scuffle followed.

'Hold him!' cried the oily voice in a tone of command. 'Bring him in! Lock the door!'

It was clear enough that the visitor had not come alone, and that Mr. Van Torp had been overpowered. The lady bit her salmon-coloured lip angrily and contemptuously.

A moment later a tall heavily-built man with thick fair hair, a long moustache, and shifty blue eyes, rushed into the room and did not stop till there was only the small table between him and the lady.

'I've caught you! What have you to say?' he asked.

'To you? Nothing!'

She deliberately turned her back on her husband, rested one elbow on the mantelpiece and set one foot upon the low fender, drawing up her velvet gown over her instep. But a moment later she heard other footsteps in the room, and turned her head to see Mr. Van Torp enter the room between two big men who were evidently ex-policemen. The millionaire, having failed to shut the door in the face of the three men, had been too wise to attempt any further resistance.

The fair man glanced down at the table and saw the envelope with his wife's initials lying beside the tea things. She had dropped it there when she had risen to her feet at the sound of his voice. He snatched it away as soon as he saw the pencilled letters on it, and in a moment he had taken out the notes and was looking over them.

'I should like you to remember this, please,' he said, addressing the two men who had accompanied him. 'This envelope is addressed to my wife, under her initials, in the handwriting of Mr. Van Torp. Am I right in taking it for your handwriting?' he inquired, in a disagreeably polite tone, and turning towards the millionaire.

'You are,' answered the American, in a perfectly colourless voice and without moving a muscle. 'That's my writing.'

'And this envelope,' continued the husband, holding up the notes before the men, 'contains notes to the amount of four thousand one hundred pounds.'

'Five hundred pounds, you mean,' said the lady coldly.

'See for yourself!' retorted the fair man, raising his eyebrows and holding out the notes.

'That's correct,' said Mr. Van Torp, smiling and looking at the lady. 'Four thousand one hundred. Only the first one was for a hundred, and the rest were thousands. I meant it for a little surprise, you see.'

'Oh, how kind! How dear and kind!' cried the lady gratefully, and with amazing disregard of her husband's presence.

The two ex-policemen had not expected anything so interesting as this, and their expressions were worthy of study. They had been engaged, through a private agency, to assist and support an injured husband, and afterwards to appear as witnesses of a vulgar clandestine meeting, as they supposed. It was not the first time they had been employed on such business, but they did not remember ever having had to deal with two persons who exhibited such hardened indifference; and though the incident of the notes was not new to them, they had never been in a case where the amount of cash received by the lady at one time was so very large.

'It is needless,' said the fair man, addressing them both, 'to ask what this money was for.'

'Yes,' said Mr. Van Torp coolly. 'You needn't bother. But I'll call your attention to the fact that the notes are not yours, and that I'd like to see them put back into that envelope and laid on that table before you go. You broke into my house by force anyhow. If you take valuables away with you, which you found here, it's burglary in England, whatever it may be in your country; and if you don't know it, these two professional gentlemen do. So you just do as I tell you, if you want to keep out of gaol.'

The fair man had shown a too evident intention of slipping the envelope into his own pocket, doubtless to be produced in evidence, but Mr. Van Torp's final argument seemed convincing.

'I have not the smallest intention of depriving my wife of the price of my honour, sir. Indeed, I am rather flattered to find that you both value it so highly.'

Mr. Van Torp's hard face grew harder, and a very singular light came into his eyes. He moved forwards till he was close to the fair man.

'None of that!' he said authoritatively. 'If you say another word against your wife in my hearing I'll make it the last you ever said to anybody. Now you'd better be gone before I telephone for the police. Do you understand?'

The two ex-policemen employed by a private agency thought the case was becoming more and more interesting; but at the same time they were made vaguely nervous by Mr. Van Torp's attitude.

'I think you are threatening me,' said the fair man, drawing back a step, and leaving the envelope on the table.

'No,' answered his adversary, 'I'm warning you off my premises, and if you don't go pretty soon I'll telephone for the police. Is that a threat?'

The last question was addressed to the two men.

'No, sir,' answered one of them.

'It would hardly be to your advantage to have more witnesses of my wife's presence here,' observed the fair man coldly, 'but as I intend to take her home we may as well go at once. Come, Maud! The carriage is waiting.'

The lady, whose name was now spoken for the first time since she had entered Mr. Van Torp's lodging, had not moved from the fireplace since she had taken up her position there. Women are as clever as Napoleon or Julius Caesar in selecting strong positions when there is to be an encounter, and a fireplace, with a solid mantelpiece to lean against, to strike, to cry upon or to cling to, is one of the strongest. The enemy is thus reduced to prowling about the room and handling knick-knacks while he talks, or smashing them if he is of a violent disposition.

The lady now leant back against the dingy marble shelf and laid one white-gloved arm along it, in an attitude that was positively regal. Her right hand might appropriately have been toying with the orb of empire on the mantelpiece, and her left, which hung down beside her, might have loosely held the sceptre. Mr. Van Torp, who often bought large pictures, was reminded of one recently offered to him in America, representing an empress. He would have bought the portrait if the dealer could have remembered which empress it represented, but the fact that he could not had seemed suspicious to Mr. Van Torp. It was clearly the man's business to know empresses by sight.

From her commanding position the Lady Maud refused her husband's invitation to go home with him.

'I shall certainly not go with you,' she said. 'Besides, I'm dining early at the Turkish Embassy and we are going to the play. You need not wait for me. I'll take care of myself this evening, thank you.'

'This is monstrous!' cried the fair man, and with a peculiarly un-English gesture he thrust his hand into his thick hair.

The foreigner in despair has always amused the genuine Anglo-Saxon. Lady Maud's lip did not curl contemptuously now, she did not raise her eyebrows, nor did her eyes flash with scorn. On the contrary, she smiled quite frankly, and the sweet ripple was in her voice, the ripple that drove some men almost crazy.

'You needn't make such a fuss,' she said. 'It's quite absurd, you know. Mr. Van Torp is an old friend of mine, and you have known him ever so long, and he is a man of business. You are, are you not?' she asked, looking to the American for assent.

'I'm generally thought to be that,' he answered.

'Very well. I came here, to Mr. Van Torp's rooms in the Temple, before going to dinner, because I wished to see him about a matter of business, in what is a place of business. It's all ridiculous nonsense to talk about having caught me—and worse. That money is for a charity, and I am going to take it before your eyes, and thank Mr. Van Torp for being so splendidly generous. Now go, and take those persons with you, and let me hear no more of this!'

Thereupon Lady Maud came forward from the mantelpiece and deliberately took from the table the envelope which contained four thousand one hundred pounds in new Bank of England notes; and she put it into the bosom of her gown, and smiled pleasantly at her husband.

Mr. Van Torp watched her with genuine admiration, and when she looked at him and nodded her thanks again, he unconsciously smiled too, and answered by a nod of approval.

The fair-haired foreign gentleman turned to his two ex-policemen with considerable dignity.

'You have heard and seen,' he said impressively. 'I shall expect you to remember all this when you are in the witness-box. Let us go.' He made a sweeping bow to his wife and Mr. Van Torp. 'I wish you an agreeable evening,' he said.

Thereupon he marched out of the room, followed by his men, who each made an awkward bow at nothing in particular before going out. Mr. Van Torp followed them at some distance towards the outer door, judging that as they had forced their way in they could probably find their way out. He did not even go to the outer threshold, for the last of the three shut the door behind him.

When the millionaire came back Lady Maud was seated in the easy-chair, leaning forward and looking thoughtfully into the fire. Assuredly no one would have suspected from her composed face that anything unusual had happened. She glanced at her friend when he came in, but did not speak, and he began to walk up and down on the other side of the table, with his hands behind him.

'You've got pretty good nerves,' he said presently.

'Yes,' answered Lady Maud, still watching the coals, 'they really are rather good.'

A long silence followed, during which she did not move and Mr. Van Torp steadily paced the floor.

'I didn't tell a fib, either,' she said at last. 'It's charity, in its way.'

'Certainly,' assented her friend. 'What isn't either purchase-money or interest, or taxes, or a bribe, or a loan, or a premium, or a present, or blackmail, must be charity, because it must be something, and it isn't anything else you can name.'

'A present may be a charity,' said Lady Maud, still thoughtful.

'Yes,' answered Mr. Van Torp. 'It may be, but it isn't always.'

He walked twice the length of the room before he spoke again.

'Do you think it's really to be war this time?' he asked, stopping beside the table. 'Because if it is, I'll see a lawyer before I go to Derbyshire.'

Lady Maud looked up with a bright smile. Clearly she had been thinking of something compared with which the divorce court was a delightful contrast.

'I don't know,' she answered. 'It must come sooner or later, because he wants to be free to marry that woman, and as he has not the courage to cut my throat, he must divorce me—if he can!'

'I've sometimes thought he might take the shorter way,' said Van Torp.

'He?' Lady Maud almost laughed, but her companion looked grave.

'There's a thing called homicidal mania,' he said. 'Didn't he shoot a boy in Russia a year ago?'

'A young man—one of the beaters. But that was an accident.'

'I'm not so sure. How about that poor dog at the Theobalds' last September?'

'He thought the creature was mad,' Lady Maud explained.

'He knows as well as you do that there's no rabies in the British Isles,' objected Mr. Van Torp. 'Count Leven never liked that dog for some reason, and he shot him the first time he got a chance. He's always killing things. Some day he'll kill you, I'm afraid.'

'I don't think so,' answered the lady carelessly. 'If he does, I hope he'll do it neatly! I should hate to be maimed or mangled.'

'Do you know it makes me uncomfortable to hear you talk like that? I wish you wouldn't! You can't deny that your husband's half a lunatic, anyway. He was behaving like one here only a quarter of an hour ago, and it's no use denying it.'

'But I'm not denying anything!'

'No, I know you're not,' said Mr. Van Torp. 'If you don't know how crazy he is, I don't suppose any one else does. But your nerves are better than mine, as I told you. The idea of killing anything makes me uncomfortable, and when it comes to thinking that he really might murder you some day—well, I can't stand it, that's all! If I didn't know that you lock your door at night I shouldn't sleep, sometimes. You do lock it, always, don't you?'

'Oh yes!'

'Be sure you do to-night. I wonder whether he is in earnest about the divorce this time, or whether the whole scene was just bluff, to get my money.'

'I don't know,' answered Lady Maud, rising. 'He needs money, I believe, but I'm not sure that he would try to get it just in that way.'

'Too bad? Even for him?'

'Oh dear, no! Too simple! He's a tortuous person.'

'He tried to pocket those notes with a good deal of directness!' observed Mr. Van Torp.

'Yes. That was an opportunity that turned up unexpectedly, but he didn't know it would. How could he? He didn't come here expecting to find thousands of pounds lying about on the table! It was easy enough to know that I was here, of course. I couldn't go out of my own house on foot, in a dinner-gown, and pick up a hansom, could I? I had one called and gave the address, and the footman remembered it and told my husband. There's nothing more foolish than making mysteries and giving the cabman first one address and then another. If Boris is really going to bring a suit, the mere fact that there was no concealment as to where I was going this evening would be strong evidence, wouldn't it? Evidence he cannot deny, too, since he must have learnt the address from the footman, who heard me give it! And people who make no secret of a meeting are not meeting clandestinely, are they?'

'You argue that pretty well,' said Mr. Van Torp, smiling.

'And besides,' rippled Lady Maud's sweet voice, as she shook out the folds of her black velvet, 'I don't care.'

Her friend held up the fur-lined cloak and put it over her shoulders. She fastened it at the neck and then turned to the fire for a moment before leaving.

'Rufus,' she said gravely, after a moment's pause, and looking down at the coals, 'you're an angel.'

'The others in the game don't think so,' answered Mr. Van Torp.

'No one was ever so good to a woman as you've been to me,' said Maud.

And all at once the joyful ring had died away from her voice and there was another tone in it that was sweet and low too, but sad and tender and grateful, all at once.

'There's nothing to thank me for,' answered Mr. Van Torp. 'I've often told you so. But I have a good deal of reason to be grateful to you for all you've given me.'

'Nonsense!' returned the lady, and the sadness was gone again, but not all the tenderness. 'I must be going,' she added a moment later, turning away from the fire.

'I'll take you to the Embassy in a hansom,' said the millionaire, slipping on his overcoat.

'No. You mustn't do that—we should be sure to meet some one at the door. Are you going anywhere in particular? I'll drop you wherever you like, and then go on. It will give us a few minutes more together.'

'Goodness knows we don't get too many!'

'No, indeed!'

So the two went down the dismal stairs of the house in Hare Court together.



CHAPTER VI

The position of a successful lyric primadonna with regard to other artists and the rest of the world is altogether exceptional, and is not easy to explain. Her value for purposes of advertisement apparently exceeds that of any other popular favourite, not to mention the majority of royal personages. A respectable publisher has been known to bring out a book in which he did not believe, solely because a leading lyric soprano promised him to say in an interview that it was the book of the year. Countless brands of cigars, cigarettes, wines and liquors, have been the fashion with the flash crowd that frequents public billiard-rooms and consumes unlimited tobacco and drink, merely because some famous 'Juliet' or 'Marguerite' has 'consented' to lend her name to the articles in question; and half the grog-shops on both sides of the Atlantic display to the admiring street the most alarming pink and white caricatures, or monstrously enlarged photographs, of the three or four celebrated lyric sopranos who happen to be before the public at any one time. In the popular mind those artists represent something which they themselves do not always understand. There is a legend about each; she is either an angel of purity and light, or a beautiful monster of iniquity; she has turned the heads of kings—'kings' in a vaguely royal plural—completely round on their shoulders, or she has built out of her earnings a hospital for crippled children; the watery-sentimental eye of the flash crowd in its cups sees in her a Phryne, a Mrs. Fry, or a Saint Cecilia. Goethe said that every man must be either the hammer or the anvil; the billiard-room public is sure that every primadonna is a siren or a martyred wife, or else a public benefactress, unless she is all three by turns, which is even more interesting.

In any case, the reporters are sure that every one wants to know just what she thinks about everything. In the United States, for instance, her opinion on political matters is often asked, and is advertised with 'scare-heads' that would stop a funeral or arrest the attention of a man on his way to the gallows.

Then, too, she has her 'following' of 'girls,' thousands of whom have her photograph, or her autograph, or both, and believe in her, and are ready to scratch out the eyes of any older person who suggests that she is not perfection in every way, or that to be a primadonna like her ought not to be every girl's highest ambition. They not only worship her, but many of them make real sacrifices to hear her sing; for most of them are anything but well off, and to hear an opera means living without little luxuries, and sometimes without necessaries, for days together. Their devotion to their idol is touching and true; and she knows it and is good-natured in the matter of autographs for them, and talks about 'my matinee girls' to the reporters, as if those eleven thousand virgins and more were all her younger sisters and nieces. An actress, even the most gifted, has no such 'following.' The greatest dramatic sopranos that ever sing Brunhilde and Kundry enjoy no such popularity. It belongs exclusively to the nightingale primadonnas, whose voices enchant the ear if they do not always stir the blood. It may be explicable, but no explanation is at all necessary, since the fact cannot be disputed.

To this amazing popularity Margaret Donne had now attained; and she was known to the matinee girls' respectful admiration as Madame Cordova, to the public generally and to her comrades as Cordova, to sentimental paragraph-writers as Fair Margaret, and to her friends as Miss Donne, or merely as Margaret. Indeed, from the name each person gave her in speaking of her, it was easy to know the class to which each belonged.

She had bought a house in London, because in her heart she still thought England the finest country in the world, and had never felt the least desire to live anywhere else. She had few relations left and none whom she saw; for her father, the Oxford scholar, had not had money, and they all looked with disapproval on the career she had chosen. Besides, she had been very little in England since her parents' death. Her mother's American friend, the excellent Mrs. Rushmore, who had taken her under her wing, was now in Versailles, where she had a house, and Margaret actually had the audacity to live alone, rather than burden herself with a tiresome companion.

Her courage in doing so was perhaps mistaken, considering what the world is and what it generally thinks of the musical and theatrical professions; and Mrs. Rushmore, who was quite powerless to influence Margaret's conduct, did not at all approve of it. The girl's will had always been strong, and her immense success had so little weakened her belief in herself, or softened her character, that she had grown almost too independent. The spirit of independence is not a fault in women, but it is a defect in the eyes of men. Darwin has proved that the dominant characteristic of male animals is vanity; and what is to become of that if women show that they can do without us? If the emancipation of woman had gone on as it began when we were boys, we should by this time be importing wives for our sons from Timbuctoo or the Friendly Islands. Happily, women are practical beings who rarely stray far from the narrow path along which usefulness and pleasure may still go hand in hand; for considering how much most women do that is useful, the amount of pleasure they get out of life is perfectly amazing; and when we try to keep up with them in the chase after amusement we are surprised at the number of useful things they accomplish without effort in twenty-four hours.

But, indeed, women are to us very like the moon, which has shown the earth only one side of herself since the beginning, though she has watched and studied our world from all its sides through uncounted ages. We men are alternately delighted, humiliated, and terrified when women anticipate our wishes, perceive our weaknesses, and detect our shortcomings, whether we be frisky young colts in the field or sober stagers plodding along between the matrimonial shafts in harness and blinkers. We pride ourselves on having the strength to smash the shafts, shake off the harness, and kick the cart to pieces if we choose, and there are men who can and do. But the man does not live who knows what the dickens women are up to when he is going quietly along the road, as a good horse should. Sometimes they are driving us, and then there is no mistake about it; and sometimes they are just sitting in the cart and dozing, and we can tell that they are behind us by their weight; but very often we are neither driven by them nor are we dragging them, and we really have not the faintest idea where they are, so that we are reduced to telling ourselves, with a little nervousness which we do not care to acknowledge, that it is noble and beautiful to trust what we love.

A part of the great feminine secret is the concealment of that independence about which there has been so much talk in our time. As for suffrage, wherever there is such a thing, the woman who does not vote always controls far more men's votes than the woman-who goes to the polls, and has only her own vote to give.

Margaret, the primadonna, did not want to vote for or against anything; but she was a little too ready to assert that she could and would lead her own life as she pleased, without danger to her good name, because she had never done anything to be ashamed of. The natural consequence was that she was gradually losing something which is really much more worth having than commonplace, technical independence. Her friend Lushington realised the change as soon as she landed, and it hurt him to see it, because it seemed to him a great pity that what he had thought an ideal, and therefore a natural manifestation of art, should be losing the fine outlines that had made it perfect to his devoted gaze. But this was not all. His rather over-strung moral sense was offended as well as his artistic taste. He felt that Margaret was blunting the sensibilities of her feminine nature and wronging a part of herself, and that the delicate bloom of girlhood was opening to a blossom that was somewhat too evidently strong, a shade too vivid and more brilliant than beautiful.