se
to both sides are generally the comparatively honest ones who have
enough. It certainly did not occur to Logotheti that he had tried to do
Margaret Donne out of four thousand pounds; he would have been only too
delighted to give her ten times the sum if she would have accepted it,
and so far as profit went the whole transaction was for her benefit,
and he might lose heavily by it. But in actual dealing he was
constitutionally unable to resist the impulse to get the better of the
person with whom he dealt. And on her side, Mrs. Rushmore, though
generous to a fault, was by nature incapable of allowing money to slip
through her fingers without reason. So the two were well matched, being
both born financiers, and Logotheti respected Mrs. Rushmore for
detecting his little 'mistake,' and she recognised in him a real 'man
of business' because he had made it.

'Let us call it a half million dollars, then,' he said, with a smile.
'At four-eighty-four, that is'--again he looked at the ceiling for ten
seconds--'that is one hundred and three thousand three hundred and five
pounds fifteen shillings fivepence halfpenny, nearly. Is that it? Shall
we say that, Mrs. Rushmore.'

'How quickly you do it!' exclaimed the lady in admiration. 'I wish I
could do that! Oh yes, I have no doubt it is quite correct. You
couldn't do it on paper, could you? You see it doesn't matter so much
about the halfpenny, but if there were a little slip in the thousands,
you know--it would make quite a difference----'

She paused significantly. Logotheti quietly pulled his cuff over his
hand, produced a pencil instead of his fountain pen, and proceeded to
divide five hundred thousand by four hundred and eighty-four to three
places of decimals.

'Fifteen and fivepence halfpenny,' he said, when he had turned the
fraction into shillings and pence, 'and the pounds are just what I
said.'

'Do you mean to say that you did all that in your head in ten seconds?'
asked Mrs. Rushmore, with renewed admiration.

'Oh no,' he answered. 'We have much shorter ways of reckoning money in
the East, but you could not understand that. You are quite satisfied
that this is right?'

'Oh, certainly!'

Mrs. Rushmore could no more have divided five hundred thousand by four
hundred and eighty-four to three places of decimals than she could have
composed _Parsifal_, but her doubts were satisfied by its having been
done 'on paper.'

Logotheti put away his jewelled pencil, to