brought up in the right way by a very refined and cultivated father
and mother who loved her devotedly. If they had lived she would not
have gone upon the stage; for as her mother's friend Mrs. Rushmore had
often told her, the mere thought of such a life for their daughter
would have broken their hearts. She was a grown woman now, and high
on the wave of increasing success and celebrity, but she still had
a childish misgiving that she had disobeyed her parents and done
something very wrong, just as when she had surreptitiously got into
the jam cupboard at the age of five.

Yet there are old-fashioned people alive even now who might think that
there was less harm in becoming a public singer than in keeping Edmund
Lushington dangling on a string for two years and more. Those things
are matters of opinion. Margaret would have answered that if he
dangled it was his misfortune and not her fault, since she never, in
her own opinion, had done anything to keep him, and would not have
been broken-hearted if he had gone away, though she would have missed
his friendship very much. Of the two, the man who had disturbed her
maiden peace of mind was Logotheti, whom she feared and sometimes
hated, but who had an inexplicable power over her when they met: the
sort of fateful influence which honest Britons commonly ascribe to all
foreigners with black hair, good teeth, diamond studs, and the other
outward signs of wickedness. Twice, at least, Logotheti had behaved in
a manner positively alarming, and on the second occasion he had very
nearly succeeded in carrying her off bodily from the theatre to
his yacht, a fate from which Lushington and his mother had been
instrumental in saving her. Such doings were shockingly lawless, but
they showed a degree of recklessly passionate admiration which was
flattering from a young financier who was so popular with women that
he found it infinitely easier to please than to be pleased.