LITMIR.BIZ

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but he began to fold up the chair as if he were going to take it away, and then he seemed to find that there was something wrong with one of its joints, and altogether it gave him a good deal of trouble, and made it quite impossible for the great man to get any nearer to Margaret.

      Little Ida had taken Mr. Van Torp's proffered hand, and had watched his hard lips when he spoke. She answered quite clearly and rather slowly, in the somewhat monotonous voice of those born deaf who have learned to speak.

      'I'm very well, thank you, Mr. Van Torp. I hope you are quite well.'

      Margaret heard, and saw the child's face, and at once decided that, if the little girl knew of her own relationship to Ida Bamberger, she was certainly ignorant of the fact that her half-sister had been engaged to Mr. Van Torp, when she had died so suddenly less than a week ago. Little Ida's manner strengthened the impression in Margaret's mind that the millionaire was having her educated by Miss More. Yet it seemed impossible that the rich old Senator should not have left her well provided.

      'I see you've made friends with Madame Cordova,' said Mr. Van Torp.

       'I'm very glad, for she's quite an old friend of mine too.'

      Margaret made a slight movement, but said nothing. Miss More saw her annoyance and intervened by speaking to the financier.

      'We began to fear that we might not see you at all on the voyage,' she said, in a tone of some concern. 'I hope you have not been suffering again.'

      Margaret wondered whether she meant to ask if he had been sea-sick; what she said sounded like an inquiry about some more or less frequent indisposition, though Mr. Van Torp looked as strong as a ploughman.

      In answer to the question he glanced sharply at Miss More, and shook his head.

      'I've been too busy to come on deck,' he said, rather curtly, and he turned to Margaret again.

      'Will you take a little walk with me, Madame Cordova?' he asked.

      Not having any valid excuse for refusing, Margaret smiled, for the first time since she had seen him on deck.

      'I'm so comfortable!' she answered. 'Don't make me get out of my rug!'

      'If you'll take a little walk with me, I'll give you a pretty present,' said Mr. Van Torp playfully.

      Margaret thought it best to laugh and shake her head at this singular offer. Little Ida had been watching them both.

      'You'd better go with him,' said the child gravely. 'He makes lovely presents.'

      'Does he?' Margaret laughed again.

      '"A fortress that parleys, or a woman who listens, is lost,'" put in

       Griggs, quoting an old French proverb.

      'Then I won't listen,' Margaret said.

      Mr. Van Torp planted himself more firmly on his sturdy legs, for the ship was rolling a little.

      'I'll give you a book, Madame Cordova,' he said.

      His habit of constantly repeating the name of the person with whom he was talking irritated her extremely. She was not smiling when she answered.

      'Thank you. I have more books than I can possibly read.'

      'Yes. But you have not the one I will give you, and it happens to be the only one you want.'

      'But I don't want any book at all! I don't want to read!'

      'Yes, you do, Madame Cordova. You want to read this one, and it's the only copy on board, and if you'll take a little walk with me I'll give it to you.'

      As he spoke he very slowly drew a new book from the depths of the wide pocket in his overcoat, but only far enough to show Margaret the first words of the title, and he kept his aggressive blue eyes fixed on her face. A faint blush came into her cheeks at once and he let the volume slip back. Griggs, being on his other side, had not seen it, and it meant nothing to Miss More. To the latter's surprise Margaret pushed her heavy rug from her knees and let her feet slip from the chair to the ground. Her eyes met Griggs's as she rose, and seeing that his look asked her whether he was to carry out her previous instructions and walk beside her, she shook her head.

      'Nine times out of ten, proverbs are true,' he said in a tone of amusement.

      Mr. Van Torp's hard face expressed no triumph when Margaret stood beside him, ready to walk. She had yielded, as he had been sure she would; he turned from the other passengers to go round to the weather side of the ship, and she went with him submissively. Just at the point where the wind and the fine spray would have met them if they had gone on, he stopped in the lee of a big ventilator. There was no one in sight of them now.

      'Excuse me for making you get up,' he said. 'I wanted to see you alone for a moment.'

      Margaret said nothing in answer to this apology, and she met his fixed eyes coldly.

      'You were with Miss Bamberger when she died,' he said.

      Margaret bent her head gravely in assent. His face was as expressionless as a stone.

      'I thought she might have mentioned me before she died,' he said slowly.

      'Yes,' Margaret answered after a moment's pause; 'she did.'

      'What did she say?'

      'She told me that it was a secret, but that I was to tell you what she said, if I thought it best.'

      'Are you going to tell me?'

      It was impossible to guess whether he was controlling any emotion or not; but if the men with whom he had done business where large sums were involved had seen him now and had heard his voice, they would have recognised the tone and the expression.

      'She said, "he did it,"' Margaret answered slowly, after a moment's thought.

      'Was that all she said?'

      'That was all. A moment later she was dead. Before she said it, she told me it was a secret, and she made me promise solemnly never to tell any one but you.'

      'It's not much of a secret, is it?' As he spoke, Mr. Van Torp turned his eyes from Margaret's at last and looked at the grey sea beyond the ventilator.

      'Such as it is, I have told it to you because she wished me to,' answered Margaret. 'But I shall never tell any one else. It will be all the easier to be silent, as I have not the least idea what she meant.'

      'She meant our engagement,' said Mr. Van Torp in a matter-of-fact tone. 'We had broken it off that afternoon. She meant that it was I who did it, and so it was. Perhaps she did not like to think that when she was dead people might call her heartless and say she had thrown me over; and no one would ever know the truth except me, unless I chose to tell—me and her father.'

      'Then you were not to be married after all!' Margaret showed her surprise.

      'No. I had broken it off. We were going to let it be known the next day.'

      'On the very eve of the wedding!'

      'Yes.' Mr. Van Torp fixed his eyes on Margaret's again. 'On the very eve of the wedding,' he said, repeating her words.

      He spoke very slowly and without emphasis, but with the greatest possible distinctness. Margaret had once been taken to see a motor-car manufactory and she remembered a machine that clipped bits off the end of an iron bar, inch by inch, smoothly and deliberately. Mr. Van Torp's lips made her think of that; they seemed to cut the hard words one by one, in lengths.

      'Poor girl!' she sighed, and looked away.

      The man's face did not change, and if his next words echoed the sympathy she expressed his tone did not.

      'I was a good deal cut up myself,' he observed coolly. 'Here's your book, Madame Cordova.'

      'No,' Margaret answered with a little burst of indignation, 'I don't want it. I won't take it from you!'

      'What's the

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