The lady now leant back against the dingy marble shelf and laid one white-gloved arm along it, in an attitude that was positively regal.  Her right hand might appropriately have been toying with the orb of empire on the mantelpiece, and her left, which hung down beside her, might have loosely held the sceptre.  Mr. Van Torp, who often bought large pictures, was reminded of one recently offered to him in America, representing an empress.  He would have bought the portrait if the dealer could have remembered which empress it represented, but the fact that he could not had seemed suspicious to Mr. Van Torp.  It was clearly the man’s business to know empresses by sight.

From her commanding position the Lady Maud refused her husband’s invitation to go home with him.

‘I shall certainly not go with you,’ she said.  ’Besides, I’m dining early at the Turkish Embassy and we are going to the play.  You need not wait for me.  I’ll take care of myself this evening, thank you.’

‘This is monstrous!’ cried the fair man, and with a peculiarly un-English gesture he thrust his hand into his thick hair.

The foreigner in despair has always amused the genuine Anglo-Saxon.  Lady Maud’s lip did not curl contemptuously now, she did not raise her eyebrows, nor did her eyes flash with scorn.  On the contrary, she smiled quite frankly, and the sweet ripple was in her voice, the ripple that drove some men almost crazy.

‘You needn’t make such a fuss,’ she said.  ’It’s quite absurd, you know.  Mr. Van Torp is an old friend of mine, and you have known him ever so long, and he is a man of business.  You are, are you not?’ she asked, looking to the American for assent.

‘I’m generally thought to be that,’ he answered.

’Very well.  I came here, to Mr. Van Torp’s rooms in the Temple, before going to dinner, because I wished to see him about a matter of business, in what is a place of business.  It’s all ridiculous nonsense to talk about having caught me—­and worse.  That money is for a charity, and I am going to take it before your eyes, and thank Mr. Van Torp for being so splendidly generous.  Now go, and take those persons with you, and let me hear no more of this!’

Thereupon Lady Maud came forward from the mantelpiece and deliberately took from the table the envelope which contained four thousand one hundred pounds in new Bank of England notes; and she put it into the bosom of her gown, and smiled pleasantly at her husband.

Mr. Van Torp watched her with genuine admiration, and when she looked at him and nodded her thanks again, he unconsciously smiled too, and answered by a nod of approval.

The fair-haired foreign gentleman turned to his two ex-policemen with considerable dignity.

‘You have heard and seen,’ he said impressively.  ’I shall expect you to remember all this when you are in the witness-box.  Let us go.’  He made a sweeping bow to his wife and Mr. Van Torp.  ’I wish you an agreeable evening,’ he said.