all be sorry for it. Most of you have!'

She looked up at Lady Maud with a rather uncertain, flickering smile,
as if she wished her mind to be made up for her, and her hands lay
weakly in her lap, the palms almost upwards.

'Oh, don't ask me!' cried her friend, answering the look rather than
the words, and speaking with something approaching to vehemence.

'Do you wish you had waited for the other one till now?' asked
Margaret softly, but she did not know that he had been killed in South
Africa; she had never seen the shabby little photograph.

'Yes--for ever!'

That was all Lady Maud said, and the two words were not uttered
dramatically either, though gravely and without the least doubt.

The butler and two men appeared, to collect the coffee cups; the
former had a small salver in his hand and came directly to Lady Maud.
He brought a telegram for her.

'You don't mind, do you?' she asked Margaret mechanically, as she
opened it.

'Of course,' answered the other in the same tone, and she looked
through the open window while her friend read the message.

It was from the Embassy in London, and it informed her in the briefest
terms that Count Leven had been killed in St. Petersburg on the
previous day, in the street, by a bomb intended for a high official.
Lady Maud made no sound, but folded the telegram into a small square
and turned her back to the room for a moment in order to slip it
unnoticed into the body of her black velvet gown. As she recovered her
former attitude she was surprised to see that the butler was still
standing two steps from her where he had stopped after he had taken
the cups from the piano and set them on the small salver on which he
had brought the message. He evidently wanted to say something to her
alone.

Lady Maud moved away from the piano, and he followed her a little
beyond the window, till she stopped and turned to hear what he had to
say.

'There are three persons asking for Mr. Van Torp, my lady,' he said
in a very low tone, and she noticed the disturbed look in his face.
'They've got a motor-car waiting in the avenue.'

'What sort of people are they?' she asked quietly; but she felt that
she was pale.

'To tell the truth, my lady,' the butler spoke in a whisper, bending
his head, 'I think they are from Scotland Yard.'

Lady Maud knew it already; she had almost guessed it when she had
glanced at his face before he spoke at all.

'Show them into the old study,' she said,