t
affect the armaments of the combined powers and the peace of Europe.

Mr. Van Torp kept away from the Primadonna, and she watched him
curiously, a good deal surprised to see that most of the others
liked him better than she had expected. She was rather agreeably
disappointed, too, at the reception she herself met with Lord
Creedmore spoke of her only as 'Miss Donne, the daughter of his oldest
friend,' and every one treated her accordingly. No one even mentioned
her profession, and possibly some of the guests did not quite realise
that she was the famous Cordova. Lady Maud never suggested that she
should sing, and Lord Creedmore detested music. The old piano in the
long drawing-room was hardly ever opened. It had been placed there in
Victorian days when 'a little music' was the rule, and since the happy
abolition of that form of terror it had been left where it stood, and
was tuned once a year, in case anybody should want a dance when there
were young people in the house.

A girl might as well master the Assyrian language in order to compose
hymns to Tiglath-Pileser as learn to play the piano nowadays, but
bridge is played at children's parties; let us not speak ill of the
Bridge that has carried us over.

Margaret was not out of her element; on the contrary, she at first
had the sensation of finding herself amongst rather grave and not
uncongenial English people, not so very different from those with whom
she had spent her early girlhood at Oxford. It was not strange to her,
but it was no longer familiar, and she missed the surroundings to
which she had grown accustomed. Hitherto, when she had been asked to
join such parties, there had been at least a few of those persons
who are supposed to delight especially in the society of sopranos,
actresses, and lionesses generally; but none of them were at Craythew.
She was suddenly transported back into regions where nobody seemed to
care a straw whether she could sing or not, where nobody flattered
her, and no one suggested that it would be amusing and instructive
to make a trip to Spain together, or that a charming little kiosk
at Therapia was at her disposal whenever she chose to visit the
Bosphorus.

There was only Logotheti to remind her of her everyday life,
for Griggs did not do so at all; he belonged much more to the
'atmosphere,' and though she knew that he had loved in his youth a
woman who had a beautiful voice, he understood nothing of music and
never talked