‘But I remember a Mr. Foxwell when I was a child,’ said Margaret.  ’He came to see us at Oxford sometimes.  Do you mean to say that he was your father?’

’Yes.  He is alive, you know—­tremendously alive!—­and he remembers you as a little girl, and wants me to bring you to see him.  Do you mind very much?  I told him I was to meet you this evening.’

‘I should be very glad indeed,’ said Margaret.

‘He would come to see you,’ said Lady Maud, rather apologetically, ’but he sprained his ankle the other day.  He was chivvying a cat that was after the pheasants at Creedmore—­he’s absurdly young, you know—­and he came down at some hurdles.’

‘I’m so sorry!  Of course I shall be delighted to go.’

’It’s awfully good of you, and he’ll be ever so pleased.  May I come and fetch you?  When?  To-morrow afternoon about three?  Are you quite sure you don’t mind?’

Margaret was quite sure; for the prospect of seeing an old friend of her father’s, and one whom she herself remembered well, was pleasant just then.  She was groping for something she had lost, and the merest thread was worth following.

‘If you like I’ll sing for him,’ she said.

‘Oh, he simply hates music!’ answered Lady Maud, with unconscious indifference to the magnificence of such an offer from the greatest lyric soprano alive.

Margaret laughed in spite of herself.

‘Do you hate music too?’ she asked.

’No, indeed!  I could listen to you for ever.  But my father is quite different.  I believe he hears half a note higher with one ear than with the other.  At all events the effect of music on him is dreadful.  He behaves like a cat in a thunderstorm.  If you want to please him, talk to him about old bindings.  Next to shooting he likes bindings better than anything in the world—­in fact he’s a capital bookbinder himself.’

At this juncture Mustapha Pasha’s pale and spiritual face appeared between the curtains of the small room, and he interrupted the conversation by a single word.

‘Bridge?’

Lady Maud was on her feet in an instant.

‘Rather!’

‘Do you play?’ asked the Ambassador, turning to Margaret, who rose more slowly.

‘Very badly.  I would rather not.’

The diplomatist looked disappointed, and she noticed his expression, and suspected that he would feel himself obliged to talk to her instead of playing.

‘I’m very fond of looking on,’ she added quickly, ’if you will let me sit beside you.’

They went back to the drawing-room, and presently the celebrated Senorita da Cordova, who was more accustomed to being the centre of interest than she realised, felt that she was nobody at all, as she sat at her host’s elbow watching the game through a cloud of suffocating cigarette smoke.  Even old Griggs, who detested cards, had sacrificed himself in order to make up the second table.  As for Logotheti, he was too tactful to refuse a game in which every one knew him to be a past master, in order to sit out and talk to her the whole evening.