to choose, which of us would be the best husband for her?—the better, I mean. You taught me to say "better," didn't you?'
Lady Maud tried to smile.
'Of two, yes,' she answered. 'You are forcing my hand, my dear friend,' she went on very gravely. 'You know very well that I trust you with all my heart. If it were possible to imagine a case in which the safety of the world could depend on my choosing one of you for my husband, you know very well that I should take you, though I never was the least little bit in love with you, any more than you ever were with me.'
'Well, but if you would, she ought,' argued Mr. Van Torp. 'It's for her own good, and as you're a friend of hers, you ought to help her to do what's good for her. That's only fair. If she doesn't marry me, she's certain to marry that Greek, so it's a forced choice, it appears to me.'
'But I can't——'
'She's a nice girl, isn't she?'
'Yes, very.'
'And you like her, don't you?'
'Very much. Her father was my father's best friend.'
'I don't believe in atavism,' observed the American, 'but that's neither here nor there. You know what you wrote me. Do you believe she'll be miserable with Logotheti or not?'
'I think she will,' Lady Maud answered truthfully. 'But I may be wrong.'
'No; you're right. I know it. But marriage is a gamble anyway, as you know better than any one. Are you equally sure that she would be miserable with me? Dead sure, I mean.'
'No, I'm not sure. But that's not a reason——'
'It's a first-rate reason. I care for that lady, and I want her to be happy, and as you admit that she will have a better chance of happiness with me than with Logotheti, I'm going to marry her myself, not only because I want to, but because it will be a long sight better for her. See? No fault in that line of reasoning, is there?'
'So far as reasoning goes——' Lady Maud's tone was half an admission.
'That's all I wanted you to say,' interrupted the American. 'So that's settled, and you're going to help me.'
'No,' answered Lady Maud quietly; 'I won't help you to break off that engagement. But if it should come to nothing, without your interfering—that is, by the girl's own free will and choice and change of mind, I'd help you to marry her if I could.'
'But you admit that she's going to be miserable,' said Van Torp stubbornly.
'I'm sorry for her, but it's none of my business. It's not honourable to try and make trouble between engaged people, no matter how ill-matched they may be.'
'Funny idea of honour,' observed the American, 'that you're bound to let a friend of yours break her neck at the very gravel pit where you were nearly smashed yourself! In the hunting field you'd grab her bridle if she wouldn't listen to you, but in a matter of marriage—oh, no! "It's dishonourable to interfere," "She's made her choice and she must abide by it," and all that kind of stuff!'
Lady Maud's clear eyes met his angry blue ones calmly.
'I don't like you when you say such things,' she said, lowering her voice a little.
'I didn't mean to be rude,' answered the millionaire, almost humbly. 'You see I don't always know. I learnt things differently from what you did. I suppose you'd think it an insult if I said I'd give a large sum of money to your charity the day I married Madame Cordova, if you'd help me through.'
"'Funny idea of honour,' observed the American."
'Please stop.' Lady Maud's face darkened visibly. 'That's not like you.'
'I'll give a million pounds sterling,' said Mr. Van Torp slowly.
Lady Maud leaned back in her corner of the sofa, clasping her hands rather tightly together in her lap. Her white throat flushed as when the light of dawn kisses Parian marble, and the fresh tint in her cheeks deepened softly; her lips were tightly shut, her eyelids quivered a little, and she looked straight before her across the room.
'You can do a pretty good deal with a million pounds,' said Mr. Van Torp, after the silence had lasted nearly half a minute.
'Don't!' cried Lady Maud, in an odd voice.
'Forty thousand pounds a year,' observed the millionaire thoughtfully. 'You could do quite a great deal of good with that, couldn't you?'
'Don't! Please don't!'
She pressed her hands to her ears and rose at the same instant. Perhaps it was she, after all, and not her friend who had been brought suddenly to a great cross-road in life. She stood still one moment by the sofa without looking down at her companion; then she left the room abruptly, and shut the door behind her.
Van Torp got up from his seat slowly when she was gone, and went to the window, softly blowing a queer tune between his closed teeth and his open lips, without quite whistling.
'Well——' he said aloud, in a tone of doubt, after a minute or two.
But he said no more, for he was much too reticent and sensible a person to talk to himself audibly even when he was alone, and much too cautious to be sure that a servant might not be within hearing, though the door was shut. He stood before the window nearly a quarter of an hour, thinking that Lady Maud might come back, but as no sound of any step broke the silence he understood that he was not to see her again that day, and he quietly let himself out of the house and went off, not altogether discontented with the extraordinary impression he had made.
Lady Maud sat alone upstairs, so absorbed in her thoughts that she did not hear the click of the lock as he opened and shut the front door.
She was much more amazed at herself than surprised by the offer he had made. Temptation, in any reasonable sense of the word, had passed by her in life, and she had never before understood what it could mean to her. Indeed, she had thought of herself very little of late, and had never had the least taste for self-examination or the analysis of her conscience. She had done much good, because she wanted to do it, and not at all as a duty, or with that idea of surprising the Deity by the amount of her good works, which actuates many excellent persons. As for doing anything seriously wrong, she had never wanted to, and it had not even occurred to her that the opportunity for a wicked deed could ever present itself to her together with the slightest desire to do it. Her labours had taken her to strange places, and she knew what real sin was, and even crime, and the most hideous vice, and its still more awful consequences; but one reason why she had wrought fearlessly was that she felt herself naturally invulnerable. She knew a good many people in her own set whom she thought quite as bad as the worst she had ever picked up on the dark side of the Virtue-Curtain; they were people who seemed to have no moral sense, men who betrayed their wives wantonly, young women who took money for themselves and old ones who cheated at bridge, men who would deliberately ruin a rival in politics, in finance, or in love, and ambitious women who had driven their competitors to despair and destruction by a scientific use of calumny. But she had never felt any inclination towards any of those things, which all seemed to her disgusting, or cowardly, or otherwise abominable. Her husband had gone astray after strange
