‘So you are little Margery,’ he said at last, with a very friendly smile.  ’Do you remember me at all, my dear?  I suppose I have changed almost more than you have.’

Margaret remembered him very well indeed as Mr. Foxwell, who used always to bring her certain particularly delicious chocolate wafers whenever he came to see her father in Oxford.  She sat down beside him and looked at his face—­clean-shaven, kindly, and energetic—­the face of a clever lawyer and yet of a keen sportsman, a type you will hardly find out of England.

Lady Maud left the two alone after a few minutes, and Margaret found herself talking of her childhood and her old home, as if nothing very much worth mentioning had happened in her life during the last ten or a dozen years.  While she answered her new friend’s questions and asked others of him she unconsciously looked about the room.  The writing-table was not far from her, and she saw on it two photographs in plain ebony frames; one was of her father, the other was a likeness of Lady Maud.  Little by little she understood that her father had been Lord Creedmore’s best friend from their schoolboy days till his death.  Yet although they had constantly exchanged short visits, the one living in Oxford and the other chiefly in town, their wives had hardly known each other, and their children had never met.

‘Take him all in all,’ said the old gentleman gravely, ’Donne was the finest fellow I ever knew, and the only real friend I ever had.’

His eyes turned to the photograph on the table with a far-away manly regret that went to Margaret’s heart.  Her father had been a reticent man, and as there was no reason why he should have talked much about his absent friend Foxwell, it was not surprising that Margaret should never have known how close the tie was that bound them.  But now, coming unawares upon the recollection of that friendship in the man who had survived, she felt herself drawn to him as if he were of her own blood, and she thought she understood why she had liked his daughter so much at first sight.

They talked for more than half an hour, and Margaret did not even notice that he had not once alluded to her profession, and that she had so far forgotten herself for the time as not to miss the usual platitudes about her marvellous voice and her astoundingly successful career.

‘I hope you’ll come and stop with us in Derbyshire in September,’ he said at last.  ’I’m quite ashamed to ask you there, for we are dreadfully dull people; but it would give us a great deal of pleasure.’

‘You are very kind indeed,’ Margaret said.  ’I should be delighted to come.’

‘Some of our neighbours might interest you,’ said Lord Creedmore.  ’There’s Mr. Van Torp, for instance, the American millionaire.  His land joins mine.’

‘Really?’

Margaret wondered if she should ever again go anywhere without hearing of Mr. Van Torp.