'You're kind to-day,' said Mr. Van Torp, after a moment's debate as to whether he should say anything at all.
'Am I? You mean that I used to be very disagreeable, don't you?' She smiled as she glanced at him. 'I must have been, I'm sure, for you used to frighten me ever so much. But I'm not in the least afraid of you now!'
'Why should any one be afraid of me?' asked Van Torp, whose mere smile had been known to terrify Wall Street when a 'drop' was expected.
Margaret laughed a little, without looking at him.
'Tell me all about the Tartar girl,' she said, instead of answering his question.
She would not have been the thoroughly feminine woman she was—far more feminine, in the simple human sense, than Lady Maud—if she had not felt satisfaction in having tamed the formidable money-wolf so that he fawned at her feet; but perhaps she was even more pleased, or amused, than she thought she could be by any such success. The man was so very much stronger and rougher than any other man with whom she had ever been acquainted, and she had once believed him to be such a thorough brute, that this final conquest flattered her vanity. The more dangerous the character of the wild beast, the greater the merit of the lion-tamer who subdues him. [{146}]
'Tell me about this handsome Tartar girl,' she said again.
Van Torp told her Baraka's history, as far as he knew it from Logotheti.
'I never heard such an amusing set of stories as you are telling me to-day,' she said.
'That particular one is Logotheti's,' he answered, 'and he can probably tell you much more about the girl.'