'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.