Margaret wondered why she could not help liking him; and by sheer force of habit she thought that he would make a very good-looking stage Romeo.

While she was thinking of that and smiling in spite of his tie, the old clock in the hall below chimed the hour, and it was a quarter to seven; and at the same moment three men were getting out of a train that had stopped at the Craythew station, three miles from Lord Creedmore's gate.

CHAPTER XVIII

The daylight dinner was over, and the large party was more or less scattered about the drawing-room and the adjoining picture-gallery in groups of three and four, mostly standing while they drank their coffee, and continued or finished the talk begun at table.

By force of habit Margaret had stopped beside the closed piano, and had seated herself on the old-fashioned stool to have her coffee. Lady Maud stood beside her, leaning against the corner of the instrument, her cup in her hand, and the two young women exchanged rather idle observations about the lovely day that was over, and the perfect weather. Both were preoccupied and they did not look at each other; Margaret's eyes watched Logotheti, who was half-way down the long room, before a portrait by Sir Peter Lely, of which he was apparently pointing out the beauties to the elderly wife of the scientific peer.

Lady Maud was looking out at the light in the sunset sky above the trees beyond the flower-beds and the great lawn, for the piano stood near an open window. From time to time she turned her head quickly and glanced towards Van Torp, who was talking with her father at some distance; then she looked out of the window again.

It was a warm evening; in the dusk of the big rooms the hum of voices was low and pleasant, broken only now and then by Van Torp's more strident tone. Outside it was still light, and the starlings and blackbirds and thrushes were finishing their supper, picking up the unwary worms and the tardy little snails, and making a good deal of sweet noise about it.

Margaret set down her cup on the lid of the piano, and at the slight sound Lady Maud turned towards her, so that their eyes met. Each noticed the other's expression.

'What is it?' asked Lady Maud, with a little smile of friendly concern. 'Is anything wrong?'

'No--that is--' Margaret smiled too, as she hesitated--'I was going to ask you the same question,' she added quickly.

'It's nothing more than usual,' returned her friend. 'I think it has gone very well, don't you, these three days? He has made a good impression on everybody--don't you think so?'

'Oh yes!' Margaret answered readily. 'Excellent! Could not be better!

I confess to being surprised, just a little--I mean,' she corrected herself hastily, 'after all the talk there has been, it might not have turned out so easy.'

'Don't you feel a little less prejudiced against him yourself?' asked Lady Maud.

'Prejudiced!' Margaret repeated the word thoughtfully. 'Yes, I suppose I'm prejudiced against him. That's the only word. Perhaps it's hateful of me, but I cannot help it--and I wish you wouldn't make me own it to you, for it's humiliating! I'd like him, if I could, for your sake.

But you must take the wish for the deed.'

'That's better than nothing!' Lady Maud seemed to be trying to laugh a little, but it was with an effort and there was no ripple in her voice. 'You have something on your mind, too,' she went on, to change the subject. 'Is anything troubling you?'

'Only the same old question. It's not worth mentioning!'

'To marry, or not to marry?'

'Yes. I suppose I shall take the leap some day, and probably in the dark, and then I shall be sorry for it. Most of you have!'

She looked up at Lady Maud with a rather uncertain, flickering smile, as if she wished her mind to be made up for her, and her hands lay weakly in her lap, the palms almost upwards.

'Oh, don't ask me!' cried her friend, answering the look rather than the words, and speaking with something approaching to vehemence.

'Do you wish you had waited for the other one till now?' asked Margaret softly, but she did not know that he had been killed in South Africa; she had never seen the shabby little photograph.

'Yes--for ever!'

That was all Lady Maud said, and the two words were not uttered dramatically either, though gravely and without the least doubt.

The butler and two men appeared, to collect the coffee cups; the former had a small salver in his hand and came directly to Lady Maud.

He brought a telegram for her.

'You don't mind, do you?' she asked Margaret mechanically, as she opened it.

'Of course,' answered the other in the same tone, and she looked through the open window while her friend read the message.

It was from the Emba.s.sy in London, and it informed her in the briefest terms that Count Leven had been killed in St. Petersburg on the previous day, in the street, by a bomb intended for a high official.

Lady Maud made no sound, but folded the telegram into a small square and turned her back to the room for a moment in order to slip it unnoticed into the body of her black velvet gown. As she recovered her former att.i.tude she was surprised to see that the butler was still standing two steps from her where he had stopped after he had taken the cups from the piano and set them on the small salver on which he had brought the message. He evidently wanted to say something to her alone.

Lady Maud moved away from the piano, and he followed her a little beyond the window, till she stopped and turned to hear what he had to say.

'There are three persons asking for Mr. Van Torp, my lady,' he said in a very low tone, and she noticed the disturbed look in his face.

'They've got a motor-car waiting in the avenue.'

'What sort of people are they?' she asked quietly; but she felt that she was pale.

'To tell the truth, my lady,' the butler spoke in a whisper, bending his head, 'I think they are from Scotland Yard.'

Lady Maud knew it already; she had almost guessed it when she had glanced at his face before he spoke at all.

'Show them into the old study,' she said, 'and ask them to wait a moment.'

The butler went away with his two coffee cups, and scarcely any one had noticed that Lady Maud had exchanged a few words with him by the window. She turned back to the piano, where Margaret was still sitting on the stool with her hands in her lap, looking at Logotheti in the distance and wondering whether she meant to marry him or not.

'No bad news, I hope?' asked the singer, looking up as her friend came to her side.

'Not very good,' Lady Maud answered, leaning her elbow on the piano.

'Should you mind singing something to keep the party together while I talk to some tiresome men who are in the old study? On these June evenings people have a way of wandering out into the garden after dinner. I should like to keep every one in the house for a quarter of an hour, and if you will only sing for them they won't stir. Will you?'

Margaret looked at her curiously.

'I think I understand,' Margaret said. 'The people in the study are asking for Mr. Van Torp.'

Lady Maud nodded, not surprised that Logotheti should have told the Primadonna something about what he had been doing.

'Then you believe he is innocent,' she said confidently. 'Even though you don't like him, you'll help me, won't you?'

'I'll do anything you ask me. But I should think--'

'No,' Lady Maud interrupted. 'He must not be arrested at all. I know that he would rather face the detectives than run away, even for a few hours, till the truth is known. But I won't let him. It would be published all over the world to-morrow morning that he had been arrested for murder in my father's house, and it would never be forgotten against him, though he might be proved innocent ten times over. That's what I want to prevent. Will you help me?'

As she spoke the last words she raised the front lid of the piano, and Margaret turned on her seat towards the instrument to open the keyboard, nodding her a.s.sent.

'Just play a little, till I am out of the room, and then sing,' said Lady Maud.

The great artist's fingers felt the keys as her friend turned away.

Anything theatrical was natural to her now, and she began to play very softly, watching the moving figure in black velvet as she would have watched a fellow singer on the stage while waiting to go on.