t a
certain distance, and he had lived amongst them long enough not to be
surprised at anything they did. Logotheti had been disappointed in not
finding the Primadonna at home, and he was not inclined to put up with
the usual round of an evening in London during the early part of the
season as a substitute for what he had lost. He was the more put out,
because, when he had last seen Margaret, three or four days earlier,
she had told him that if he came on that evening at about seven
o'clock he would probably find her alone. Having nothing that looked
at all amusing to occupy him, he was just in the mood to do anything
unusual that presented itself.

Griggs guessed at most of these things, and as he walked along he
vaguely pictured to himself the interview that was likely to take
place.

CHAPTER XII

Opinion was strongly against Mr. Van Torp. A millionaire is almost
as good a mark at which to throw mud as a woman of the world whose
reputation has never before been attacked, and when the two can be
pilloried together it is hardly to be expected that ordinary people
should abstain from pelting them and calling them bad names.

Lady Maud, indeed, was protected to some extent by her father and
brothers, and by many loyal friends. It is happily still doubtful how
far one may go in printing lies about an honest woman without getting
into trouble with the law, and when the lady's father is not only a
peer, but has previously been a barrister of reputation and a popular
and hard-working member of the House of Commons during a long time,
it is generally safer to use guarded language; the advisability of
moderation also increases directly as the number and size of the
lady's brothers, and inversely as their patience. Therefore, on the
whole, Lady Maud was much better treated by the society columns than
Margaret at first expected.

On the other hand, they vented their spleen and sharpened their
English on the American financier, who had no relations and scarcely
any friends to stand by him, and was, moreover, in a foreign country,
which always seems to be regarded as an aggravating circumstance when
a man gets into any sort of trouble. Isidore Bamberger and Mr. Feist
had roused and let loose upon him a whole pack of hungry reporters and
paragraph writers on both sides of the Atlantic.

The papers did not at first print his name except in connection with
the divorce of Lady Maud. But this was a landmark, the smallest