She moved towards the door as she spoke, and Diana followed her.

“But why—­why do you tell me this?” she faltered.

The Russian’s queer green eyes held an odd expression as she answered:—­

“Perhaps it’s because I like you very much better than you do me.  You’re one of the few genuine warm-hearted people I’ve met—­and I don’t want you to be unhappy.  Good-bye,” she added carelessly, “thank you for my tea.”

The door closed behind her, and Diana, returning to her seat by the fire, sat staring into the flames, puzzling over what she had heard.

Miss Lermontof’s curious warning had frightened her a little.  She apparently possessed some intimate knowledge of the affairs both of Max Errington and Adrienne de Gervais, and what she knew did not appear to be very favourable to either of them.

Diana had intuitively felt from the very beginning of her acquaintance with Errington that there was something secret, something hidden, about him, and in a way this had added to her interest in him.  It had seized hold of her imagination, kept him vividly before her mind as nothing else could have done, and now Olga Lermontof’s strange hints and innuendos gave a fresh fillip to her desire to know in what way Max Errington differed from his fellows.

“It would be dishonourable of him to make you care,” Miss Lermontof had said.

The words seemed to ring in Diana’s ears, and side by side with them, as though to add a substance of reality, came the memory of Errington’s own bitter exclamation:  “I forgot that I’m a man barred out from all that makes life worth living!”

She felt as though she had drawn near some invisible web, of which every now and then a single filament brushed against her—­almost impalpable, yet touching her with the fleetest and lightest of contacts.

During the weeks that followed, Diana became more or less an intimate at Adrienne’s house in Somervell Street.  The actress seemed to have taken a great fancy to her, and although she was several years Diana’s senior, the difference in age formed no appreciable stumbling-block to the growth of the friendship between them.

On her part, Diana regarded Adrienne with the enthusiastic devotion which an older woman—­more especially if she happens to be very beautiful and occupying a somewhat unique position—­frequently inspires in one younger than herself, and Olga Lermontof’s grave warning might just as well have been uttered to the empty air.  Diana’s warm-hearted, spontaneous nature swept it aside with an almost passionate loyalty and belief in her new-found friend.

Once Miss Lermontof had referred to it rather disagreeably.

“So you’ve decided to make a friend of Miss de Gervais after all?” she said.

“Yes.  And I think you’ve misjudged her utterly,” Diana warmly assured her.  “Of course,” she added, sensitively afraid that the other might misconstrue her meaning, “I know you believed what you were saying, and that you only said it out of kindness to me.  But you were mistaken—­really you were.”