one other thing--something about a little girl called
Ida, who is supposed to be the daughter of that old Alvah Moon who
robbed your mother. You can guess the sort of thing the letter said
without my telling you.'

Margaret leaned forward and poked the small wood fire with a pair of
unnecessarily elaborate gilt tongs, and she nodded, for she remembered
how Lord Creedmore had mentioned the child that afternoon. He had
hesitated a little, and had then gone on speaking rather hurriedly.
She watched the sparks fly upward each time she touched the log, and
she nodded slowly.

'What are you thinking of?' asked Logotheti.

But she did not answer for nearly half a minute. She was reflecting on
a singular little fact which made itself clear to her just then. She
was certainly not a child; she was not even a very young girl, at
twenty-four; she had never been prudish, and she did not affect the
pre-Serpentine innocence of Eve before the fall. Yet it was suddenly
apparent to her that because she was a singer men treated her as if
she were a married woman, and would have done so if she had been
even five years younger. Talking to her as Margaret Donne, in Mrs.
Rushmore's house, two years earlier, Logotheti would not have
approached such a subject as little Ida Moon's possible relation to
Mr. Van Torp, because the Greek had been partly brought up in England
and had been taught what one might and might not say to a 'nice
English girl.' Margaret now reflected that since the day she had set
foot upon the stage of the Opera she had apparently ceased to be a
'nice English girl' in the eyes of men of the world. The profession of
singing in public, then, presupposed that the singer was no longer the
more or less imaginary young girl, the hothouse flower of the social
garden, whose perfect bloom the merest breath of worldly knowledge
must blight for ever. Margaret might smile at the myth, but she could
not ignore the fact that she was already as much detached from it in
men's eyes as if she had entered the married state. The mere fact of
realising that the hothouse blossom was part of the social legend
proved the change in herself.

'So that is the secret about the little girl,' she said at last. Then
she started a little, as if she had made a discovery. 'Good heavens!'
she exclaimed, poking the fire sharply. 'He cannot be as bad as
that--even he!'

'What do you mean?' asked Logotheti, surprised.

'No--really--it's too awful,' Marga