'and ask them to wait a
moment.'

The butler went away with his two coffee cups, and scarcely any one
had noticed that Lady Maud had exchanged a few words with him by the
window. She turned back to the piano, where Margaret was still sitting
on the stool with her hands in her lap, looking at Logotheti in the
distance and wondering whether she meant to marry him or not.

'No bad news, I hope?' asked the singer, looking up as her friend came
to her side.

'Not very good,' Lady Maud answered, leaning her elbow on the piano.
'Should you mind singing something to keep the party together while
I talk to some tiresome men who are in the old study? On these June
evenings people have a way of wandering out into the garden after
dinner. I should like to keep every one in the house for a quarter
of an hour, and if you will only sing for them they won't stir. Will
you?'

Margaret looked at her curiously.

'I think I understand,' Margaret said. 'The people in the study are
asking for Mr. Van Torp.'

Lady Maud nodded, not surprised that Logotheti should have told the
Primadonna something about what he had been doing.

'Then you believe he is innocent,' she said confidently. 'Even though
you don't like him, you'll help me, won't you?'

'I'll do anything you ask me. But I should think--'

'No,' Lady Maud interrupted. 'He must not be arrested at all. I know
that he would rather face the detectives than run away, even for a
few hours, till the truth is known. But I won't let him. It would
be published all over the world to-morrow morning that he had been
arrested for murder in my father's house, and it would never be
forgotten against him, though he might be proved innocent ten times
over. That's what I want to prevent. Will you help me?'

As she spoke the last words she raised the front lid of the piano,
and Margaret turned on her seat towards the instrument to open the
keyboard, nodding her assent.

'Just play a little, till I am out of the room, and then sing,' said
Lady Maud.

The great artist's fingers felt the keys as her friend turned away.
Anything theatrical was natural to her now, and she began to play very
softly, watching the moving figure in black velvet as she would have
watched a fellow singer on the stage while waiting to go on.

Lady Maud did not speak to Van Torp first, but to Griggs, and then to
Logotheti, and the two men slipped away together and disappeared. Then
she came back to Van Torp, smiling p