Fair Margaret - Page 75/206

If Mrs. Rushmore's logic was faulty and the language of her argument

vague, her instinct was keen enough and had not altogether misled her.

Logotheti was neither a secret agent of the wicked Alvah Moon who had

robbed Margaret of her fortune, nor had he the remotest idea of making

Margaret support him in luxurious idleness in case she made a success.

But if, when a young and not over-scrupulous Oriental has been refused

by an English girl, he does not abandon the idea of marrying her, but

calmly considers the possibilities of making her marry him against her

will, he may be described as having 'designs' upon her, then Logotheti

was undeniably a very 'designing' person, and Mrs. Rushmore was not

nearly so far wrong as Margaret thought her. Whether it was at all

likely that he might succeed, was another matter, but he possessed both

the qualities and the weapons which sometimes ensure success in the

most unpromising undertakings.

He was tenacious, astute and cool, he was very rich, he was very much

in love and he had no scruples worth mentioning; moreover, if he

failed, he belonged to a country from which it is extremely hard to

obtain the extradition of persons who have elsewhere taken the name of

the law in vain. It is with a feeling of national pride and security

that the true-born Greek takes sanctuary beneath the shadow of the

Acropolis.

He had played his first card boldly, but not recklessly, to find out

how matters stood. He had been the target of too many matrimonial aims

not to know that even such a girl as Margaret Donne might be suddenly

dazzled and tempted by the offer of his hand and fortune, and might

throw over the possibilities of a stage career for the certainties of

an enormously rich marriage. But he had not counted on that at all, and

had really set Margaret much higher in his estimation than to suppose

that she would marry him out of hand for his money; he had reckoned

only on finding out whether he had a rival, and in this he had

succeeded, to an extent which he had not anticipated, and the result

was not very promising. There had been no possibility of mistaking

Margaret's tone and manner when she had confessed that there was 'some

one else.' On reflection he had to admit that Margaret had not been dazzled by his

offer, though she had seemed surprised. She had either been accustomed

to the idea of unlimited money, because Mrs. Rushmore was rich, or else

she did not know its value. It came to the same thing in the end.

Orientals very generally act on the perfectly simple theory that nine

people out of ten are to be imposed upon by the mere display of what

money can buy, and that if you show them the real thing they will be

tempted by it. It is not pleasant to think how often they are right;

and though Logotheti had made no impression on Margaret with his

magnificent ruby and his casual offer of a yacht as a present, he did

not reproach himself with having made a mistake. He had simply tried

what he considered the usual method of influencing a woman, and as it

had failed he had eliminated it from the arsenal of his weapons. That

was all. He had found out at once that it was of no use, and as he

hated to waste time he was not dissatisfied with the result of his

day's work.