‘Does it happen to be true?’ asked Lady Maud, with an encouraging smile.

‘Well, since you ask me—­yes.’  Margaret felt uncomfortable.

‘Oh, I thought it might be,’ answered Lady Maud.  ’With all his good qualities he has a very rough side.  The story about me is perfectly true too.’

Margaret was amazed at her friend’s quiet cynicism.

‘Not that about the—­the envelope on the table—­’

She stopped short.

’Oh yes!  There were four thousand one hundred pounds in it.  My husband counted the notes.’

The singer leaned back in her chair and stared in unconcealed surprise, wondering how in the world she could have been so completely mistaken in her judgment of a friend who had seemed to her the best type of an honest and fearless Englishwoman.  Margaret Donne had not been brought up in the gay world; she had, however, seen some aspects of it since she had been a successful singer, and she did not exaggerate its virtues; but somehow Lady Maud had seemed to be above it, while living in it, and Margaret would have put her hand into the fire for the daughter of her father’s old friend, who now acknowledged without a blush that she had taken four thousand pounds from Rufus Van Torp.

‘I suppose it would go against me even in an English court,’ said Lady Maud in a tone of reflection.  ’It looks so badly to take money, you know, doesn’t it?  But if I must be divorced, it really strikes me as delightfully original to have it done by the Patriarch of Constantinople!  Doesn’t it, my dear?’

‘It’s not usual, certainly,’ said Margaret gravely.

She was puzzled by the other’s attitude, and somewhat horrified.

‘I suppose you think I’m a very odd sort of person,’ said Lady Maud, ’because I don’t mind so much as most women might.  You see, I never really cared for Leven, though if I had not thought I had a fancy for him I wouldn’t have married him.  My people were quite against it.  The truth is, I couldn’t have the husband I wanted, and as I did not mean to break my heart about it, I married, as so many girls do.  That’s my little story!  It’s not long, is it?’

She laughed, but she very rarely did that, even when she was amused, and now Margaret’s quick ear detected here and there in the sweet ripple a note that did not ring quite like the rest.  The intonation was not false or artificial, but only sad and regretful, as genuine laughter should not be.  Margaret looked at her, still profoundly mystified, and still drawn to her by natural sympathy, though horrified almost to disgust at what seemed her brutal cynicism.

’May I ask one question?  We’ve grown to be such good friends that perhaps you won’t mind.’

Lady Maud nodded.

‘Of course,’ she said.  ’Ask me anything you please.  I’ll answer if I can.’

’You said that you could not marry the man you liked.  Was he—­Mr. Van Torp?’