‘I’m a great admirer of yours, Senorita,’ said Mr. Feist in a womanish voice and with a drawl.  ’I was in the Metropolitan in New York when you sang in the dark and prevented a panic.  I suppose that was about the finest thing any singer ever did.’

Margaret smiled pleasantly, though she felt the strongest repulsion for the man.

‘I happened to be on the stage,’ she said modestly.  ’Any of the others would have done the same.’

‘Well,’ drawled Mr. Feist, ‘may be.  I doubt it.’

Dinner was announced.

‘Will you keep house for me?’ asked the Ambassador of Lady Maud.

’There’s something rather appropriate about your playing Ambassadress here,’ observed Logotheti.

Margaret heard but did not understand that her new acquaintance was a Russian subject.  Mustapha Pasha held out his arm to take her in to dinner.  The spectacled peer took in Lady Maud, and the men straggled in.  At table Lady Maud sat opposite the Pasha, with the peer on her right and the barrister on her left.  Margaret was on the right of the Ambassador, on whose other side Griggs was placed, and Logotheti was Margaret’s other neighbour.  Feist and the young playwright were together, between Griggs and the nobleman.

Margaret glanced round the table at the people and wondered about them.  She had heard of the barrister and the novelist, and the peer’s name had a familiar sound that suggested something unusual, though she could not quite remember what it was.  It might be pictures, or the north pole, or the divorce court, or a new idiot asylum; it would never matter much.  The new acquaintances on whom her attention fixed itself were Lady Maud, who attracted her strongly, and Mr. Feist, who repelled her.  She wished she could speak Greek in order to ask Logotheti who the latter was and why he was present.  To judge by appearances he was probably a rich young American who travelled and frequented theatres a good deal, and who wished to be able to say that he knew Cordova.  He had perhaps arrived lately with a letter of introduction to the Ambassador, who had asked him to the first nondescript informal dinner he gave, because the man would not have fitted in anywhere else.

Logotheti began to talk at once, while Mustapha Pasha plunged into a political conversation with Griggs.

‘I’m much more glad to see you than you can imagine,’ the Greek said, not in an undertone, but just so softly that no one else could hear him.

‘I’m not good at imagining,’ answered Margaret.  ’But I’m glad you are here.  There are so many new faces.’

’Happily you are not shy.  One of your most enviable qualities is your self-possession.’

‘You’re not lacking in that way either,’ laughed Margaret.  ’Unless you have changed very much.’

’Neither of us has changed much since last year.  I only wish you would!’

Margaret turned her head to look at him.