about it. As for Lady Maud, Margaret saw much less of her
than she had expected; the hostess was manifestly preoccupied, and
was, moreover, obliged to give more of her time to her guests than
would have been necessary if they had been of the younger generation
or if the season had been winter.

Margaret noticed in herself a new phase of change with regard to
Logotheti, and she did not like it at all: he had become necessary to
her, and yet she was secretly a little ashamed of him. In that temple
of respectability where she found herself, in such 'a cloister of
social pillars' as Logotheti called the party, he was a discordant
figure. She was haunted by a painful doubt that if he had not been a
very important financier some of those quiet middle-aged Englishmen
might have thought him a 'bounder,' because of his ruby pin, his
summer-lightning waistcoats, and his almond-shaped eyes. It was very
unpleasant to be so strongly drawn to a man whom such people probably
thought a trifle 'off.'

It irritated her to be obliged to admit that the London financier, who
was a professed and professing Hebrew, was in appearance an English
gentleman, whereas Konstantinos Logotheti, with a pedigree of
Christian and not unpersecuted Fanariote ancestors, that went back to
Byzantine times without the least suspicion of any Semitic marriage,
might have been taken for a Jew in Lombard Street, and certainly would
have been thought one in Berlin. A man whose eyes suggested dark
almonds need not cover himself with jewellery and adorn himself
in naming colours, Margaret thought; and she resented his way of
dressing, much more than ever before. Lady Maud had called him exotic,
and Margaret could not forget that. By 'exotic' she was sure that her
friend meant something like vulgar, though Lady Maud said she liked
him.

But the events that happened at Craythew on Sunday evening threw such
insignificant details as these into the shade, and brought out the
true character of the chief actors, amongst whom Margaret very
unexpectedly found herself.

It was late in the afternoon after a really cloudless June day, and
she had been for a long ramble in the park with Lord Creedmore, who
had talked to her about her father and the old Oxford days, till all
her present life seemed to be a mere dream; and she could not realise,
as she went up to her room, that she was to go back to London on
the morrow, to the theatre, to rehearsals, to Pompeo Stromboli,
Sc