The Diva's Ruby. F. Marion Crawford

      'In what way, ma'am?'

      'I mean, do you think you could take a man's voice for a woman's at a distance?'

      'Oh, I see!' Potts exclaimed. 'As it might be, at the telephone?'

      'Well—at the telephone, if you like, or anywhere else. Do you think you might?'

      'It would depend on the voice, ma'am,' observed Potts, with caution.

      'Of course it would,' assented Margaret rather impatiently.

      'Well, ma'am, I'll say this, since you ask me. When I was last at home I was mistaken in that way about my own brother, for I heard him calling to me from downstairs, and I took him for my sister Milly.'

      'Oh! That's interesting!' Margaret smiled. 'What sort of voice has your brother? How old is he?'

      'He's eight-and-twenty, ma'am; and as for his voice, he has a sweet counter-tenor, and sings nicely. He's a song-man at the cathedral, ma'am.'

      'Really! How nice! Have you a voice too? Do you sing at all?'

      'Oh, no, ma'am!' answered Potts in a deprecating tone. 'One in the family is quite enough!'

      Margaret vaguely wondered why, but did not inquire.

      'You were quite sure that it was your brother who was speaking, I suppose,' she said.

      'Oh, yes, ma'am! I looked down over the banisters, and there he was!'

      Margaret had the solid health of a great singer, and it would have been a serious trouble indeed that could have interfered with her unbroken and dreamless sleep during at least eight hours; but when she closed her eyes that night she was quite sure that she could not have slept at all but for Potts's comforting little story about the brother with the 'counter-tenor' voice. Yet even so, at the moment before waking in the morning, she dreamt that she was at the telephone again, and that words in a strange language came to her along the wire in a soft and caressing tone that could only be a woman's, and that for the first time in all her life she knew what it was to be jealous. The sensation was not an agreeable one.

      The dream-voice was silent as soon as she opened her eyes, but she had not been awake long without realising that she wished very much to see Logotheti at once, and was profoundly thankful that she had torn up her letter to Lady Maud. She was not prepared to admit, even now, that Konstantin was the ideal she should have chosen for a husband, and whom she had been describing from imagination when she had suddenly stopped writing. But, on the other hand, the mere thought that he had perhaps been amusing himself in the society of another woman all yesterday afternoon made her so angry that she took refuge in trying to believe that he had spoken the truth and that she had really been mistaken about the voice.

      It was all very well to talk about learning Tartar! How could she be sure that it was not modern Greek, or Turkish? She could not have known the difference. Was it so very unlikely that some charming compatriot of his should have come from Constantinople to spend a few weeks in Paris? She remembered the mysterious house in the Boulevard Péreire where he lived, the beautiful upper hall where the statue of Aphrodite stood, the doors that would not open like other doors, the strangely-disturbing encaustic painting of Cleopatra in the drawing-room—many things which she distrusted.

      Besides, supposing that the language was really Tartar—were there not Russians who spoke it? She thought there must be, because she had a vague idea that all Russians were more or less Tartars. There was a proverb about it. Moreover, to the English as well as to the French, Russians represent romance and wickedness.

      She would not go to the telephone herself, but she sent a message to Logotheti, and he came out in the cool time of the afternoon. She thought he had never looked so handsome and so little exotic since she had known him. To please her he had altogether given up the terrific ties, the lightning-struck waistcoats, the sunrise socks, and the overpowering jewellery he had formerly affected, and had resigned himself to the dictation of a London tailor, who told him what he might, could, should, and must wear for each circumstance and hour of daily life, in fine gradations, from deer-stalking to a royal garden-party. The tailor, who dressed kings and made a specialty of emperors, was a man of taste, and when he had worked on the Greek financier for a few weeks the result was satisfactory; excepting for his almond-shaped eyes no one could have told Logotheti from an Englishman by his appearance, a fact which even Potts, who disapproved of Margaret's choice, was obliged to admit.

      Mrs. Rushmore was amazed and pleased.

      'My dear,' she said afterwards to Margaret, 'what a perfectly wonderful change! Think how he used to look! And now you might almost take him for an American gentleman!'

      He was received by Mrs. Rushmore and Margaret together, and he took noticeable pains to make himself agreeable to the mistress of the house. At first Margaret was pleased at this; but when she saw that he was doing his best to keep Mrs. Rushmore from leaving the room, as she probably would have done, Margaret did not like it. She was dying to ask him questions about his lessons in Tartar, and especially about his teacher, and she probably meant to cast her inquiries in such a form as would make it preferable to examine him alone rather than before Mrs. Rushmore; but he talked on and on, only pausing an instant for the good lady's expressions of interest or approval. With diabolical knowledge of her weakness he led the conversation to the subject of political and diplomatic lions, and of lions of other varieties, and made plans for bringing some noble specimens to tea with her. She was not a snob; she distrusted foreign princes, marquises, and counts, and could keep her head well in the presence of an English peer; but lions were irresistible, and Logotheti offered her a whole menagerie of them, and described their habits with minuteness, if not with veracity.