work, is it? I might have known that! Oh, the fiend, the harpy!”

The boy did not know what a harpy was, but he knew that his beloved Fräulein was being called something, and he struck at Marie Louise fiercely, kicked at her shins and tried to bite her hands, screaming: “You shall not call our own precious Fräulein names. Harpy, your own self!”

And the little girl struck and scratched and made a curdled face and echoed, “Harpy, your own self!”

It hurt Marie Louise so extravagantly to be hated by these irascible cherubs that her anger vanished in regret. She pleaded: “But, my darlings, you don’t know what you are saying. The Lusitania was a beautiful ship––”

The boy, Victor, was loyal always to his own: “She wasn’t as beautiful as my yacht what I sail in the Round Pond.”

Marie Louise condescended to argue: “Oh yes, she was! She was a great ship, noble like Saint Paul’s Cathedral, and she was loaded with passengers, men and women and children: and then suddenly she was ripped open and sunk, and little children like you were thrown into the water, into the deep, deep, deep ocean. And the big waves tore them from their mothers’ arms and ran off with them, choking and strangling them and dragging them down and down––forever down.”

She was dizzied by the horde of visions mobbing her brain. Then the onrush of horror was checked abruptly as she saw the supercilious lad regarding her frenzy calmly. His comment was:

“It served ’em jolly well right for bein’ on ’at old boat.”

Marie Louise almost swooned with dread of such a soul. She shrank from the boy and groaned, “Oh, you toad, you little toad!”

He was frightened a little by her disgust, and he took refuge in a higher authority. “Fräulein told us. And she knows.”

The bit lassiky stormed to his support: “She does so!” and drove it home with the last nail of feminine argument: “So there now!”

Marie Louise retorted, weakly: “We’ll see! We’ll soon see!” And she rushed out of the room, like another little girl, straight to the door of Sir Joseph, where she knocked impatiently. His man appeared and murmured through a crevice: “Sorry, miss, but Seh Joseph is dressing.”

Marie Louise went to Lady Webling’s door, and a maid came to whisper: “She is in her teb. We’re having dinner at tome to-night, miss.”

Marie Louise nodded. Dinner must be served, and on time. It was the one remaining solemnity that must not be forgotten or delayed.

She went to her own room. Her maid was in a stew about the hour, and the gown that was to be put on. Marie Louise felt that black was the only wear on such a Bartholomew’s night. But Sir Joseph hated black so well that he had put a clause in his will against its appearance even at his own funeral. Marie Louise loved him dearly, but she 9 feared his prejudices. She had an abject terror of offending him, because she felt that she owed everything she had, and was, to the whim of his good grace. Gratitude was a passion with her, and it doomed her, as all passions do, good or bad, to the penalties human beings pay for every excess of virtue or vice––if, indeed, vice is anything but an immoderate, untimely virtue.

Marie Louise let her maid select the gown. She was an exquisite picture as she stood before the long mirror and watched the buckling on of her armor, her armor of taffeta and velvet with the colors of sunlit leaves and noon-warmed flowers in carefully elected wrinkles assured with many a hook and eye. Her image was radiant and pliant and altogether love-worthy, but her thoughts were sad and stern.

She was resolved that Fräulein should not remain in the house another night. She wondered that Sir Joseph had not ousted her from the family at the first crash of war. The old crone! She could have posed for one of the Grimms’ most vulturine witches. But she had kept a civil tongue in her head till now; the children adored her, and Sir Joseph had influence enough to save her from being interned or deported.

Hitherto, Marie Louise had felt sorry for her in her dilemma of being forced to live at peace in the country her own country was locked in war with. Now she saw that the woman’s oily diplomacy was only for public use, and that all the while she was imbruing the minds of the little children with the dye of her own thoughts. The innocents naturally accepted everything she told them as the essence of truth.

Marie Louise hoped to settle the affair before dinner, but by the time she was gowned and primped, the first premature guest had arrived like the rashest primrose, shy, surprised, and surprising. Sir Joseph had gone below already. Lady Webling was hull down on the stairway.

Marie Louise saw that her protest must wait till after the dinner, and she followed to do her duty to the laws of hospitality.

Sir Joseph liked to give these great affairs. He loved to eat and to see others eat. “The more the merrier,” was his 11 motto––one of the most truthless of the old saws. Little dinners at Sir Joseph’s––what he called “on fameals”––would have been big dinners elsewhere. A big dinner was like a Lord Mayor’s banquet. He needed only a crier at his back and a Petronius to immortalize his gourmandise.

To-night he had great folk and small fry. Nobody pretended to know the names of everybody. Sir Joseph himself leaned heavily on the man who sang out the labels of the guests, and even then his wife whispered them to him as they came forward, and for a precaution, kept slipping them into the conversation as reminders.

There were several Americans present: a Doctor and Mrs. Clinton Worthing who had come over with a special shipload of nurses. The ship had been fitted out by Mrs. Worthing, who had been Muriel Schuyler, daughter of the giant plutocrat, Jacob Schuyler, who was lending England millions of money weekly. A little American millionaire, Willie Enslee, living in England now on account of some scandal in his past, was there. He did not look romantic.

Marie Louise had no genius for names, or faces, either. To-night she was frightened, and she made some horrible blunders, greeting the grisly Mr. Verrinder by the name of Mr. Hilary. The association was clear, for Mr. Hilary had called Mr. Verrinder atrocious names in Parliament; but it was like calling “Mr. Capulet” “Mr. Montague.” Marie Louise tried to redeem her blunder by putting on an extra effusiveness for the sake of Mr. and Mrs. Norcross. Mrs. Norcross had only recently shaken off the name of Mrs. Patchett after a resounding divorce. So Marie Louise called her new husband by the name of her old, which made it very pleasant.

Her wits were so badly dispersed that she gave up the attempt to take in the name of an American whom Lady Webling passed along to her as “Mr. Davidge, of the States.” And he must have been somebody of importance, for even Sir Joseph got his name right. Marie Louise, however, disliked him cordially at once––for two reasons: first, she hated herself so much that she could not like anybody just then; next, this American was entirely too American. He was awkward and indifferent, but not at all with the easy amble and patrician unconcern of an English aristocrat.

Marie Louise was American-born herself, and humbly born, at that, but she liked extreme Americanism never the more. Perhaps she was a bit of a snob, though fate was getting ready to beat the snobbery out of her. And hers was an unintentional, superficial snobbery, at worst. Some people said she was affected and that she aped the swagger