There was something almost unnatural in her calm, and the shrewd Russian eyed her with a sudden apprehension.  This was not the same woman whom she had left last night, thrilling and softly tremulous with love.

She began speaking quickly, an undercurrent of suppressed excitement in her tones.

“There’s some mistake, isn’t there?  You don’t want me—­this morning?”

Diana regarded her composedly.

“Certainly I want you—­to rehearse for to-night.”

“To rehearse?  Rehearse?” Olga’s voice rose in a sharp crescendo of amazement.  “Surely”—­bending forward to peer into Diana’s face—­“surely you are not going to keep Max waiting while you—­rehearse?”

“It’s impossible for us to meet to-day,” replied Diana steadily.  “I had—­forgotten—­the Duchess’s reception.”

Olga made a gesture of impatience.

“But you must meet to-day,” she said imperiously.  “You must!  To-morrow it will be too late.”

“Too late?  How too late?”

Miss Lermontof hesitated a moment.  Then she said quietly:—­

“I happen to know that Max is leaving England to-night.”

Diana shrugged her shoulders.

“Well, he will come back, I suppose.”

The other looked at her curiously.

“Diana, what has come to you?  You are so—­changed—­since last night.”

“We’re told that ‘night unto night showeth knowledge,’” retorted Diana bitterly.  “Perhaps my knowledge has increased since—­last night.”  She watched the puzzled expression deepen on Olga’s face.  Then she added:  “So I can afford to wait a little longer to see Max.”

Again Miss Lermontof hesitated.  Then, as though impelled to speak despite her better judgment, she burst out impetuously:—­

“But you can’t!  You can’t wait.  He isn’t coming back again.”

There was a queer tense note in Diana’s voice as she played her first big card.

“Then I suppose I shall have to follow him to—­Ruvania,” she said very quietly.

“To Ruvania?” Olga repeated, and by the sudden narrowing of her eyes, as though she were all at once “on guard,” Diana knew that her shot in the dark had gone home.  “What do you mean?  Why—­Ruvania?”

Diana faced her squarely.  Despite her feverish desire to wring the truth from the other woman, she had herself well in hand, and when she spoke it was with a certain dignity.

“Don’t you think that the time for pretence and hypocrisy has gone by? You know—­all that I ought to know.  Now that even the newspapers are aware of Max’s—­and Adrienne’s—­connection with Ruvania, do you still think it necessary that I, his wife, should be kept in the dark?”

“The newspapers?” Olga spoke with sudden excitement.  “How much do they know?  What do they say? . . .  After all, though,” she added more quietly, “it doesn’t much matter—­now.  Everything is settled—­for good or ill.  But if the papers had got hold of it sooner—­”