Everything went very well till Sunday night, and most of the people formed a much better opinion of Mr. Van Torp than those who had lately read about him in the newspapers might have thought possible.  The Cabinet Ministers talked politics with him and found him sound—­for an American; the M.F.H. saw him ride, and felt for him exactly the sympathy which a Don Cossack, a cowboy, and a Bedouin might feel for each other if they met on horseback, and which needs no expression in words; and the three distinguished peers liked him at once, because he was not at all impressed by their social greatness, but was very much interested in what they had to say respectively about science, horse-breeding, and Herr Bebel.  The great London financier, and he, and Monsieur Logotheti exchanged casual remarks which all the men who were interested in politics referred to mysterious loans that must affect the armaments of the combined powers and the peace of Europe.

Mr. Van Torp kept away from the Primadonna, and she watched him curiously, a good deal surprised to see that most of the others liked him better than she had expected.  She was rather agreeably disappointed, too, at the reception she herself met with Lord Creedmore spoke of her only as ’Miss Donne, the daughter of his oldest friend,’ and every one treated her accordingly.  No one even mentioned her profession, and possibly some of the guests did not quite realise that she was the famous Cordova.  Lady Maud never suggested that she should sing, and Lord Creedmore detested music.  The old piano in the long drawing-room was hardly ever opened.  It had been placed there in Victorian days when ‘a little music’ was the rule, and since the happy abolition of that form of terror it had been left where it stood, and was tuned once a year, in case anybody should want a dance when there were young people in the house.

A girl might as well master the Assyrian language in order to compose hymns to Tiglath-Pileser as learn to play the piano nowadays, but bridge is played at children’s parties; let us not speak ill of the Bridge that has carried us over.

Margaret was not out of her element; on the contrary, she at first had the sensation of finding herself amongst rather grave and not uncongenial English people, not so very different from those with whom she had spent her early girlhood at Oxford.  It was not strange to her, but it was no longer familiar, and she missed the surroundings to which she had grown accustomed.  Hitherto, when she had been asked to join such parties, there had been at least a few of those persons who are supposed to delight especially in the society of sopranos, actresses, and lionesses generally; but none of them were at Craythew.  She was suddenly transported back into regions where nobody seemed to care a straw whether she could sing or not, where nobody flattered her, and no one suggested that it would be amusing and instructive to make a trip to Spain together, or that a charming little kiosk at Therapia was at her disposal whenever she chose to visit the Bosphorus.