‘But it is no laughing matter,’ she answered, her face growing grave again after a moment.

Griggs had promised not to ask questions, and he expressed no curiosity.

‘As soon as you go below I’ll see about the chair,’ he said.

‘My cabin is on this deck,’ Margaret answered.  ’I believe I have a tiny little sitting-room, too.  It’s what they call a suite in their magnificent language, and the photographs in the advertisements make it look like a palatial apartment!’

She left the rail as she spoke, and found her own door on the same side of the ship, not very far away.

‘Here it is,’ she said.  ‘Thank you very much.’

She looked into his eyes again for an instant and went in.

She had forgotten Signor Stromboli and what he had said, for her thoughts had been busy with a graver matter, but she smiled when she saw the big bunch of dark red carnations in a water-jug on the table, and the little cylinder-shaped parcel which certainly contained a dozen little boxes of the chocolate ‘oublies’ she liked, and the telegram, with its impersonal-looking address, waiting to be opened by her after having been opened, read, and sealed again by her thoughtful maids.  Such trifles as the latter circumstance did not disturb her in the least, for though she was only a young woman of four and twenty, a singer and a musician, she had a philosophical mind, and considered that if virtue has nothing to do with the greatness of princes, moral worth need not be a clever lady’s-maid’s strong point.

‘Tom’ was her old friend Edmund Lushington, one of the most distinguished of the younger writers of the day.  He was the only son of the celebrated soprano, Madame Bonanni, now retired from the stage, by her marriage with an English gentleman of the name of Goodyear, and he had been christened Thomas.  But his mother had got his name and surname legally changed when he was a child, thinking that it would be a disadvantage to him to be known as her son, as indeed it might have been at first; even now the world did not know the truth about his birth, but it would not have cared, since he had won his own way.

Margaret meant to marry him if she married at all, for he had been faithful in his devotion to her nearly three years; and his rivalry with Constantine Logotheti, her other serious adorer, had brought some complications into her life.  But on mature reflection she was sure that she did not wish to marry any one for the present.  So many of her fellow-singers had married young and married often, evidently following the advice of a great American humorist, and mostly with disastrous consequences, that Margaret preferred to be an exception, and to marry late if at all.