‘So that is the secret about the little girl,’ she said at last.  Then she started a little, as if she had made a discovery.  ‘Good heavens!’ she exclaimed, poking the fire sharply.  ’He cannot be as bad as that—­even he!’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Logotheti, surprised.

‘No—­really—­it’s too awful,’ Margaret said slowly, to herself.  ‘Besides,’ she added, ’one has no right to believe an anonymous letter.’

‘The writer was well informed about you, at least,’ observed Logotheti.  ‘You say that the details are true.’

‘Absolutely.  That makes the other thing all the more dreadful.’

‘It’s not such a frightful crime, after all,’ Logotheti answered with a little surprise.  ’Long before he fell in love with you he may have liked some one else!  Such things may happen in every man’s life.’

’That one thing—­yes, no doubt.  But you either don’t know, or you don’t realise just what all the rest has been, up to the death of that poor girl in the theatre in New York.’

‘He was engaged to her, was he not?’

‘Yes.’

‘I forget who she was.’

‘His partner’s daughter.  She was called Ida Bamberger.’

‘Ida?  Like the little girl?’

’Yes.  Bamberger divorced his wife, and she married Senator Moon.  Don’t you see?’

‘And the girls were half-sisters—­and—?’ Logotheti stopped and stared.

‘Yes.’  Margaret nodded slowly again and poked the fire.

‘Good heavens!’ The Greek knew something of the world’s wickedness, but his jaw dropped.  ‘Oedipus!’ he ejaculated.

‘It cannot be true,’ Margaret said, quite in earnest.  ’I detest him, but I cannot believe that of him.’

For in her mind all that she knew and that Griggs had told her, and that Logotheti did not know yet, rose up in orderly logic, and joined what was now in her mind, completing the whole hideous tale of wickedness that had ended in the death of Ida Bamberger, who had been murdered, perhaps, in desperation to avert a crime even more monstrous.  The dying girl’s faint voice came back to Margaret across the ocean.

‘He did it—­’

And there was the stain on Paul Griggs’ hand; and there was little Ida’s face on the steamer, when she had looked up and had seen Van Torp’s lips moving, and had understood what he was saying to himself, and had dragged Margaret away in terror.  And not least, there was the indescribable fear of him which Margaret felt when he was near her for a few minutes.

On the other side, what was there to be said for him?  Miss More, quiet, good, conscientious Miss More, devoting her life to the child, said that he was one of the kindest men living.  There was Lady Maud, with her clear eyes, her fearless ways, and her knowledge of the world and men, and she said that Van Torp was kind, and good to people in trouble and true to his friends.  Lord Creedmore, the intimate friend