'I said what I thought,' observed Logotheti with a sudden air of conscientious reserve. 'For once in our acquaintance, I was not thinking of pleasing you. And then I was afraid that I had displeased you, as I so often have.'
The last words were spoken with a regret that was real.
'I have forgiven you,' said Margaret quietly; 'with conditions!' she added, as an afterthought, and smiling.
'That's what a runaway horse seems to say when he walks quietly home, with his head down and his ears limp, after nearly breaking one's neck!'
'I was a born runaway,' said Logotheti meekly, 'but you have cured me.'
In the pause that followed this speech, Mr. Feist leaned forward and spoke to Margaret across the table.
'I think we have a mutual friend, Madame,' he said.
'Indeed?' Margaret spoke coolly; she did not like to be called 'Madame' by people who spoke English.
'Yes,' Margaret said, after a moment's hesitation, 'I know Mr. Van Torp; he came over on the same steamer.'
The others at the table were suddenly silent, and seemed to be listening. Lady Maud's clear eyes rested on Mr. Feist's face.
'He's quite a wonderful man, I think,' observed the latter.
'Yes,' assented the Primadonna indifferently.
'Don't you think he is a wonderful man?' insisted Mr. Feist, with his disagreeable drawl.
'I daresay he is,' Margaret answered, 'but I don't know him very well.'
'Because I happen to know that he thinks everything of you, Madame Cordova. That's why I supposed, you were intimate friends.'
The others had listened hitherto in a sort of mournful silence, distinctly bored. Lady Maud's eyes now turned to Margaret, but the latter still seemed perfectly indifferent, though she was wishing that some one else would speak. Griggs turned to Mr. Feist, who was next to him.
'You mean that he is a wonderful man of business, perhaps,' he said.
'Well, we all know he's that, anyway,' returned his neighbour. 'He's not exactly a friend of mine, not exactly!' A meaning smile wrinkled the unhealthy face and suddenly made it look older. 'All the same, I think he's quite wonderful. He's not merely an able man, he's a man of powerful intellect.'
'A Nickel Napoleon,' suggested the barrister, who was bored to death by this time, and could not imagine why Lady Maud followed the conversation with so much interest.