She did not admire him for his looks, either.  So far as appearance was concerned, she preferred Lushington, with his smooth hair and fair complexion.  Logotheti was a handsome and showy Oriental, that was all, and she knew instinctively that the type must be common in the East.  What attracted her was probably his daring masculineness, which contrasted so strongly with Lushington’s quiet and rather bashful manliness.  The Englishman would die for a cause and make no noise about it, which would be heroic; but the Greek would run away with a woman he loved, at the risk of breaking his neck, which was romantic in the extreme.  It is not easy to be a romantic character in the eyes of a lady who lives on the stage, and by it, and constantly gives utterance to the most dramatic sentiments at a pitch an octave higher than any one else; but Logotheti had succeeded.  There never was a woman yet to whom that sort of thing has not appealed once; for one moment she has felt everything whirling with her as if the centre of gravity had gone mad, and the Ten Commandments might drop out of the solid family Bible and get lost.  That recollection is probably the only secret of a virtuously colourless existence, but she hides it, like a treasure or a crime, until she is an old and widowed woman; and one day, at last, she tells her grown-up granddaughter, with a far-away smile, that there was once a man whose eyes and voice stirred her strongly, and for whom she might have quite lost her head.  But she never saw him again, and that is the end of the little story; and the tall girl in her first season thinks it rather dull.

But it was not likely that the chronicle of Cordova’s youth should come to such an abrupt conclusion.  The man who moved her now had been near her too often, the sound of his voice was too easily recalled, and, since his rival’s defection, he was too necessary to her; and, besides, he was as obstinate as Christopher Columbus.

‘Let me see,’ she said thoughtfully.  ’There’s a rehearsal to-morrow morning.  That means a late luncheon.  Come at two o’clock, and if it’s fine we can go for a little walk.  Will you?’

‘Of course.  Thank you.’

He had hardly spoken the words when a servant opened the door and Lady Maud came in.  She had not dropped the opera cloak she wore over her black velvet gown; she was rather pale, and the look in her eyes told that something was wrong, but her serenity did not seem otherwise affected.  She kissed Margaret and gave her hand to Logotheti.

‘We dined early to go to the play,’ she said, ’and as there’s a curtain-raiser, I thought I might as well take a hansom and join them later.’

She seated herself beside Margaret on one of those little sofas that are measured to hold two women when the fashions are moderate, and are wide enough for a woman and one man, whatever happens.  Indeed they must be, since otherwise no one would tolerate them in a drawing-room.  When two women instal themselves in one, and a man is present, it means that he is to go away, because they are either going to make confidences or are going to fight.