‘May I come in?’ asked the singer anxiously, and Lady Maud saw that she seemed much disturbed, and had a newspaper in her hand.  ’I’m so glad I just caught you,’ Margaret added, as the door opened.

They went in together.  The house was very small and narrow, and Lady Maud led the way into a little sitting-room on the right of the hall, and shut the door.

‘Is it true?’ Margaret asked as soon as they were alone.

‘What?’

‘About your divorce—­’

Lady Maud smiled rather contemptuously.

‘Is it already in the papers?’ she asked, glancing at the one Margaret had brought.  ‘I only heard of it myself an hour ago!’

‘Then it’s really true!  There’s a horrid article about it—­’

Margaret was evidently much more disturbed than her friend, who sat down in a careless attitude and smiled at her.

‘It had to come some day.  And besides,’ added Lady Maud, ’I don’t care!’

‘There’s something about me too,’ answered Margaret, ’and I cannot help caring.’

‘About you?’

’Me and Mr. Van Torp—­the article is written by some one who hates him—­that’s clear!—­and you know I don’t like him; but that’s no reason why I should be dragged in.’

She was rather incoherent, and Lady Maud took the paper from her hand quietly, and found the article at once.  It was as ‘horrid’ as the Primadonna said it was.  No names were given in full, but there could not be the slightest mistake about the persons referred to, who were all clearly labelled by bits of characteristic description.  It was all in the ponderously airy form of one of those more or less true stories of which some modern weeklies seem to have an inexhaustible supply, but it was a particularly vicious specimen of its class so far as Mr. Van Torp was concerned.  His life was torn up by the roots and mercilessly pulled to pieces, and he was shown to the public as a Leicester Square Lovelace or a Bowery Don Juan.  His baleful career was traced from his supposed affair with Mrs. Isidore Bamberger and her divorce to the scene at Margaret’s hotel in New York, and from that to the occasion of his being caught with Lady Maud in Hare Court by a justly angry husband; and there was, moreover, a pretty plain allusion to little Ida Moon.

Lady Maud read the article quickly, but without betraying any emotion.  When she had finished she raised her eyebrows a very little, and gave the paper back to Margaret.

‘It is rather nasty,’ she observed quietly, as if she were speaking of the weather.

‘It’s utterly disgusting,’ Margaret answered with emphasis.  ’What shall you do?’

’I really don’t know.  Why should I do anything?  Your position is different, for you can write to the papers and deny all that concerns you if you like—­though I’m sure I don’t know why you should care.  It’s not to your discredit.’

‘I could not very well deny it,’ said the Primadonna thoughtfully.  Almost before the words had left her lips she was sorry she had spoken.