Fair Margaret - Page 205/206

'It's of no use,' she said. 'Something always brings us together. I

believe it's our fate. Thank you for what you've just done. Thank

you--Tom, with all my heart!' And suddenly the voice was Margaret's, and rang true and kind. For had

he not saved her, and her career, too, perhaps? She could not but be

grateful, and forget her other triumphant self for a moment. There was

no knowing where that mad Greek might have taken her if she had gone

near the door in the corridor again; it would have been somewhere out

of Europe, to some lawless Eastern country whence she could never have

got back to civilisation again.

'You must thank my mother,' Lushington answered quietly. 'It was she

who found out the danger and told me what to do. But I'm glad you're

safe from that brute!' He pressed the handsome, chalked hand in his own and then to his lips

when he had spoken, in a very un-English way; for, after all, he was

the son of Madame Bonanni, the French singer, and only half an

Anglo-Saxon.

* * * * * The last thing Madame Bonanni remembered, before a strangely sweet and

delicious perfume had overpowered her senses, was that she had

congratulated herself on not having believed that Logotheti was really

in prison, arrested by a mistake. How hugely ingenious he had been, she

thought, in trying to get poor Margaret's best friends out of the way!

But at that point, while she felt herself being carried along in the

sack as swiftly and lightly as if she had been a mere child, she

suddenly fell asleep.

She never had any idea how long she was unconscious, but she afterwards

calculated that it must have been between twenty minutes and half an

hour, and she came to herself just as she felt that she was being laid

in a comfortable position on a luxuriously cushioned sofa.

She heard heavy retreating footsteps, and then she felt that a hand was

undoing the mouth of the sack above her head.

'Dearest lady,' said a deep voice, with a sort of oily, anticipative

gentleness in it, 'can you forgive me my little stratagem?' The voice spoke very softly, as if the speaker were not at all sure

that she was awake; but when she heard it, Madame Bonanni started, for

it was certainly not the voice of Constantine Logotheti, though it was

strangely familiar to her.

The sack was drawn down from her face quickly and skilfully. At the

same time some slight sound from the door of the room made the man look

half round.