Decidedly Gloria was coming to the front again—in the newspapers, at all events. The South American question was written about, telegraphed about, and talked about, every day. The South American question was for the time the dispute between Gloria and her powerful neighbour, who was supposed to cherish designs of annexation with regard to her. It is a curious fact that in places like South America, where every State might be supposed to have, or indeed might be shown to have, ten times more territory than she well knows what to do with, the one great idea of increasing the national dignity seems to be that of taking in some vast additional area of land. The hungry neighbour of Gloria had been an Empire, but had got rid of its Emperor, and was now believed to be anxious to make a fresh start in dignity by acquiring Gloria, as if to show that a Republic could be just as good as an Empire in the matter of aggression and annexation. Therefore a dispute had been easy to get up. A frontier line is always a line that carries an electric current of disputes. There were some questions of refugees, followers of Ericson, who had crossed the frontier, and whose surrender the new Government of Gloria had absurdly demanded. There were questions of tariff, of duties, of smuggling, all sorts of questions, which, after flickering about separately for some time, ran together at last like drops of quicksilver, and so formed for the diplomatists and for the newspapers the South American question.

What did it all mean? There were threats of war. Diplomacy had for some time believed that the great neighbour of Gloria wanted either war or annexation. The new Republic desired to vindicate its title to respectability in the eyes of a somewhat doubtful and irreverent population, and if it could only boast of the annexation of Gloria the thing would be done. The new government of Gloria flourished splendidly in despatches, in which they declared their ardent desire to live on terms of friendship with all their neighbours, but proclaimed that Gloria had traditions which must be maintained. If Gloria did not mean resistance, then her Government ought certainly not to have kept such a stiff upper lip; and if Gloria did mean resistance was she strong enough to face her huge rival?

This was the particular question which puzzled and embarrassed the Dictator. He could methodically balance the forces on either side. The big Republic had measureless tracts of territory, but she had only a comparatively meagre population. Gloria was much smaller in extent—not much larger, say, than France and Germany combined—but she had a denser population. Given something vital to fight about, Ericson felt some hope that Gloria could hold her own. But the whole quarrel seemed to him so trivial and so factitious that he could not believe the reality of the story was before the world. He knew the men who were at the head of affairs in Gloria, and he had not the slightest faith in their national spirit. He sometimes doubted whether he had not made a mistake, when, having their lives in his hand, and dependent on his mercy, he had allowed them to live. He had only to watch the course of events daily—to follow with keen and agonising interest the telegrams in the papers—telegrams often so torturingly inaccurate in names and facts and places—and to wait for the private advices of his friends, which now came so few and so far between that he felt certain he was cut off from news by the purposed intervention of the authorities at Gloria.

One question especially tormented him. Was the whole quarrel a sham so far as Gloria and her interests were concerned? Was Gloria about to be sold to her great rival by the gang of adventurers, political, financial, and social, who had been for the moment entrusted with the charge of her affairs? Day after day, hour after hour, Ericson turned over this question in his mind. He was in constant communication with Sir Rupert, and his advice guided Sir Rupert a great deal in the framing of the despatches, which, of course, we were bound to send out to our accredited representatives in Orizaba and in Gloria. But he did not venture to give even Sir Rupert any hint of his suspicions that the whole thing was only a put-up job. He was too jealous of the honour of Gloria. To him Gloria was as his wife, his child; he could not allow himself to suggest the idea that Gloria had surrendered herself body and soul to the government of a gang of swindlers.

Sir Rupert prepared many despatches during these days of tension. Undoubtedly he derived much advantage from such schooling as he got from the Dictator. He perfectly astonished our representatives in Orizaba and in Gloria by the fulness and the accuracy of his local knowledge. His answers in the House of Commons were models of condensed and clear information. He might, for aught that anyone could tell to the contrary, have lived half his life in Gloria and the other half in Orizaba. For himself he began to admire more and more the clear impartiality of the Dictator. Ericson seemed to give him the benefit of his mere local knowledge, strained perfectly clear of any prejudice or partisanship. But Ericson certainly kept back his worst suspicions. He justified himself in doing so. As yet they were only suspicions.

Sir Rupert dictated to Soame Rivers the points of various despatches. Sir Rupert liked to have a distinct savour of literature and of culture in his despatches, and he put in a certain amount of that kind of thing himself, and was very much pleased when Soame Rivers could contribute a little more. He was becoming very proud of his despatches on this South American question. Nobody could be better coached, he thought. Ericson must certainly know all about it—and he was pretty well able to give the despatches a good form himself—and then Soame Rivers was a wonderful man for a happy allusion or quotation or illustration. So Sir Rupert felt well contented with the way things were going; and it may be that now and again there came into his mind the secret, half-suppressed thought that if the South American question should end, despite all his despatches, in the larger Republic absorbing the lesser, and that thus Ericson was cut off from any further career in the New World, it would be very satisfactory if he would settle down in England; and then if Helena and he took to each other, Helena's father would put no difficulties in their way.

Soame Rivers copied, amended, added to, the despatches with, metaphorically, his tongue in his cheek. The general attitude of Soame Rivers towards the world's politics was very much that of tongue in cheek. The attitude was especially marked in this way when he had to do with the affairs of Gloria. He copied out and improved and enriched the graceful sentences in which his chief urged the representatives of England to be at once firm and cautious, at once friendly and reserved, and so on, with a very keen and deliberate sense of a joke. He could see, of course, with half an eye, where the influence of Ericson came in, and he should have dearly liked, but did not venture, to spoil all by some subtle phrase of insinuation which perhaps his chief might fail to notice, and so allow to go off for the instruction of our representative in Gloria or Orizaba. Soame Rivers had begun to have a pretty strong feeling of hatred for the Dictator. It angered him even to hear Ericson called 'the Dictator.' 'Dictator of what?' he asked himself scornfully. Because a man has been kicked out of a place and dare not set his foot there again, does that constitute him its dictator! There happened to be about that time a story going the round of London society concerning a vain and pretentious young fellow who had been kicked out of a country house for thrusting too much of his fatuous attentions on the daughter of the host and hostess. Soame Rivers at once nicknamed him 'The Dictator' 'Why "The Dictator"?' people asked. 'Because he has been kicked out—don't you see?' was the answer. But Soame Rivers did not give forth that witticism in the presence of Sir Rupert or of Sir Rupert's daughter.

Meanwhile, the Dictator was undoubtedly becoming a more important man than ever with the London public. The fact that he was staying in London gave the South American question something like a personal interest for most people. A foreign question which otherwise would seem vague, unmeaning, and unintelligible comes to be at least interesting and worthy of consideration, if not indeed of study, if you have under your eyes some living man who has been in any important way mixed up in it. The general sympathy of the public began to go with the young Republic of Gloria and against her bigger rival. A Republic for which an Englishman had thought of risking his life—which he had actually ruled over—he being still visible and so the front just now in London, must surely be better worthy the sympathy of Englishmen than some great, big, bullying State, which, even when it had a highly respectable Emperor, had not the good sense to hold possession of him.

So the Dictator found himself coming in for a new season of popularity. One evening he accompanied the Langleys to a theatre where some new and successful piece was in its early run, and when he was seen in the box and recognised, there was an outbreak of cheers from the galleries and in somewhat slow sequence from the pit. The Dictator shrank back into the box; Helena's eyes flashed up to the galleries and down to the pit in delight and pride. She would have liked the orchestra to strike up the National Anthem of Gloria, and would have thought such a performance only a natural and reasonable demonstration in favour of her friend and hero. She leaned back to him and said:

'You see they appreciate you here.'

'They don't understand a bit about our Gloria troubles,' he said. 'Why should they? What is it to them?'

'How ungracious!' Helena exclaimed. 'They admire you, and that is the way in which you repay them.'

'I know how little it all means,' Ericson murmured, 'and I don't know that I represent just now the cause of Gloria in her quarrel. I want to see into it a little deeper.'

'But it is generous of these people here. They think that Gloria is going to be annexed—and they know that you have been Gloria's patriot and Dictator, and therefore they applaud you. Oh, come now, you must be grateful—? you really must—and you must own that our English people can be sympathetic.'

'I will admit all you wish,' he said.

Helena drew back in the box, and instinctively leaned towards her father, who was standing behind, and who seldom remained long in a box at a theatre, because he generally had so many people to see in other boxes between the acts. She was vexed because Ericson would persist in treating her as a child. She did not want him to admit anything merely because she wished him to admit it. She wanted to be argued with, like a rational human being—like a man.

'What a handsome dark woman that is in the box just opposite to us,' she said, addressing her words rather to Sir Rupert than to the Dictator. 'She is very handsome. I don't know her—I wonder who she is?'

'I seem to know her face,' Sir Rupert said, 'but I can't just at the moment put a name to it.'

'I know her face well and I can put a name to it,' the Dictator said. 'It is Miss Paulo—Dolores Paulo—daughter of the owner of Paulo's Hotel, where I am staying.'

'Oh, yes, of course,' Sir Rupert struck in; 'I have seen her and spoken with her. She is quite lady-like, and I am told well educated and clever too.'

'She is very well educated and very clever,' Ericson said 'and as well-bred a woman as you could find anywhere.'

'Does she go into society at all? I suppose not,' Helena said coldly. She felt a little spiteful—not against Dolores; at least, not against Dolores on Dolores' own account—but against her as having been praised by Ericson. She thought it hard that Ericson should first have treated her, Helena, as a child with whom one would agree, no matter what she said, and immediately after launch out into praise of the culture and cleverness of Miss Paulo.

'I don't fancy she cares much about getting into society,' Ericson replied. 'One of the things I admire most about Paulo and his daughter is that they seem to make their own life and their own work enough for them, and don't appear to care to get to be anything they are not.'

'Is that her father with her?' Sir Rupert asked.

'Yes, that is her father,' Ericson answered. 'I must go round and pay them a visit when this act is over.'

'I'll go, too,' Sir Rupert said.

'Oh, and may not I go?' Helena eagerly asked. She had in a moment got over her little spleen, and felt in her generous, impulsive way that she owed instant reparation to Miss Paulo.

'No, I think you had better not go rushing round the theatre,' Sir Rupert said. 'Mr. Ericson will go first, and when he comes back to take charge of you, I will pay my visit.'

'Well,' Helena said composedly, and settling herself down in her chair, 'I'll go and call on her to-morrow.'

'Certainly, by all means,' her father said.

Ericson gave Helena a pleased and grateful look. Her eyes drooped under it—she hardly knew why. She had a penitent feeling somehow. Then the curtain fell, and Ericson went round to visit Miss Paulo.

'Who has just come into the back of that girl's box?' Sir Rupert asked—who was rather short-sighted and hated the trouble of an opera-glass.

'Oh, it's Mr. Hamilton,' his daughter, who had the eyes of an eagle, was able to tell him.

'Hamilton? Oh, yes, to be sure; I've seen him talking to her.'

'He seems to be talking to her now pretty much,' said Helena.

'Oh, the curtain is going up,' Sir Rupert said, 'and Ericson is rushing away. Hamilton stays, I see. I'll go and see her after this act.'

'And I'll go and see her to-morrow,' were the words of his daughter.

In a moment Ericson came in. The piece was in movement again. Helena kept her eyes fixed on Miss Paulo's box. She was puzzled about Hamilton. She had very little prejudice of caste or class, and yet she could not readily admit into her mind the possibility of a man of her own social rank who had actually wanted to marry her, making love soon after to the daughter of an hotel-keeper. But why should she fancy that Hamilton was making love to Miss Paulo? He was very attentive to her, certainly, and did not seem willing to leave her box; but was not that probably part of the chivalry of his nature—and the chivalry of his training under the Dictator—to pay especial attention to a girl of low degree? The Dictator, she thought to herself with a certain pride in him and for him, had not left his box to go to see anyone but Miss Paulo.

When the curtain fell for the next time, Sir Rupert went round in his stately way to the box where Dolores and her father and Hamilton were sitting. Then Helena seized her opportunity, and suddenly said to Ericson:

'I want you to tell me all about Miss Paulo. Dolores—what a pretty name!'

'She is a very clever girl,' he began.

'But not, I hope, a superior person? Not a woman to be afraid of?'

'No, no; not in the least.'

'Does Mr. Hamilton see much of her?' Helena had now grown saucy again, and looked the Dictator full in the face, with the look of one who means to say: 'You and I know something of what happened before that.'

Ericson smiled, a grave smile.

'He has to see her now and again,' he said.

'Has to see her? Perhaps he likes to see her.'

'I am sure I hope he does. He must be rather lonely.'

'Are men ever lonely?'

'Very lonely sometimes.'

'But not as women are lonely. Men can always find companionship. Do look at Mr. Hamilton—how happy he seems!'

'Hamilton's love for you was deep and sincere,' the Dictator said, with an almost frowning earnestness.

'And now behold,' she replied, with sparkling and defiant eyes. 'See! Look there!'

Then Sir Rupert came back to the box and the discussion was brought to an end.

Hamilton came into the box and paid a formal visit, and said a few formal words. The curtain fell upon the last act, and Sir Rupert's carriage whirled his daughter away. Helena sat up late in her bedroom that night. She was finding out more and more with every day, every incident, that the conditions of life were becoming revolutionised for her. She was no longer like the girl she always had been before. She felt herself growing profoundly self-conscious, self-inquiring. She who had hitherto been the merest creature of impulse—generous impulse, surely, almost always—now found herself studying beforehand every word she ought to speak and every act she ought to do. She lay awake of nights cross-examining herself as to what precise words she had spoken that day, as to what things she had done, what gestures even she had made, in the vain and torturing effort to find out whether she had done anything which might betray her secret. It seemed to her, with the touching, delightful, pitiful egotism of which the love of the purest heart is capable, that there was not a breathing of the common wind that might not betray to the world the secret of her love. She had in former days carried her disregard for the conventional so far that malign critics, judging purely by the narrowest laws, had described her as unwomanly. Nor were all these harsh and ill-judging critics women—which would have been an intelligible thing enough. It is gratifying to discourage vanity in woman, to set down as unwomanly the girl who has gathered all the men around her. It is soothing to mortified feeling to say that the successful girl simply 'went for' the men, and compelled them to pay attention to her. But there were men not unfriendly to her or to Sir Rupert who shook their heads and said that Helena Langley was rather unwomanly. If they could have seen into her heart now, they would have known that she was womanly enough in all conscience. She succumbed in a moment to all the tenderest weaknesses and timidities of woman. Never before had she cared one straw whether people said she was flirting with this, that, or the other man—and the curious thing is that, while she was thus utterly careless, people never did accuse her of flirting. But now she felt in her own heart that she was conscious of some emotion far more deep and serious than a wish for a flirtation; she found that she was in love—in love—in love, and with a man who did not seem to have the faintest thought of being in love with her. She felt, therefore, as if she had to go through this part of her life masked, and also armoured. Every eye that turned on her she regarded as a suspicious eye. Every chance question addressed suddenly to her seemed like a question driven at her, to get at the heart of her mystery. A man slowly recovering from some wound or other injury which has shattered for the time his nervous power, will, when he begins to walk slowly about the streets, start and shudder if he sees someone moving rapidly in his direction, because he is seized with an instinctive and horrible dread that the rapid walker is sure to come into collision with him. Helena Langley felt somewhat like that. Her nerves were shaken; her framework of joyous self-forgetfulness was wholly shattered; she was conscious and nervous all over—in every sudden word or movement she feared an attack upon her nerves. What would it matter to the world—the world of London—even if the world had known all? Two ladies would meet and say, 'Oh, my dear, do you know, that pretty and odd girl Helena Langley—Sir Rupert's daughter—has fallen over head and ears in love with the Dictator, as they call him—that man who has come back from some South American place! Isn't it ridiculous?—and they say he doesn't care one little bit about her.' 'Well, I don't know—he might do a great deal worse—she's a very clever girl, I think, and she will have lots of money.' 'Yes, if her father chooses to give it to her; but I'm told she hasn't a single sixpence of her own, and Sir Rupert mightn't quite like the idea of her taking up with a beggarly foreign exile from South America, or South Africa, or wherever it is.' 'But, my dear, the man isn't a foreigner—he is an Englishman, and a very attractive man too. I think I should be very much taken by him if I were a girl.' 'Well, you surprise me. I am told he is old enough to be her father.' 'Oh, good gracious, no; a man of about forty, I should think; just the right age of man for a girl to marry; and really there are so few marrying men in these days that even girls with rich fathers can't always be choosers, don't you know?'

Now, the way in which these two ladies might have talked about Helena's secret, if they could have discovered it, is a fair illustration of the vapid kind of interest which society in general would have taken in the whole story. But it did not seem thus to Helena. To her it appeared as if the whole world would have cried scorn upon her if it had found out that she fell in love with a man who had given her no reason to believe that he had fallen in love with her. Outside her own closest friends, society would not have cared twopence either way. Society is interested in the marriages of girls who belong to its set—or in their subsequent divorces, if such events should come about. But society cares nothing whatever about maiden heart-throbbings. It is vaguely and generally assumed that all girls begin by falling in love with the wrong person, and then soberise down for matrimony and by matrimony, and that it does not matter in the least what their silly first fancies were. Even the father and mother of some particular girl will not take her early love-fancies very seriously. She will get over it, they say contentedly—perhaps with self-cherished, half-suppressed recollection of the fact that he and she have themselves got over such a feeling and been very happy, or at least fairly happy, after, in their married lives.

But to Helena Langley things looked differently. She was filled with the conviction that it would be a shame to her if the world—her world—were to discover that she had fallen in love with a man who had not fallen in love with her. The world would have taken the news with exactly the same amount of interest, alarm, horror, that it would have felt if authoritatively informed that Helena Langley had had the toothache. In the illustration just given of a morbid, nervous condition, the sufferer dreads that anyone moving rapidly in his direction is going to rush in upon him and collide with him. But the rapid mover is thinking not at all of the nervous sufferer, and would be only languidly interested if he were told of the suffering, and would think it an ordinary and commonplace sort of suffering after all—just what everybody has at one time or another, don't you know?

Was Helena unhappy? On the whole, no—decidedly not. She had found her hero. She had found out her passion. A new inspiration was breathed into her life. This Undine of the West End, of the later end of the outworn century had discovered the soul that was in her formerly undeveloped system. She had come in for a possession like the possession of a throne, which brings heavy responsibility and much peril and pain with it, but yet which those who have once possessed it will not endure to be parted from. She could follow his fortunes—she could openly be his friend—she felt a kind of claim on him and proprietorial right over him. She had never felt any particular use in her existence before, except, indeed, in amusing herself, and, let it be added in fairness to the child, in giving pleasure to others, and trying to do good for others.

But now she had found a new existence. She had come in for her inheritance—for her kingdom—the kingdom of human love which is the inheritance of all of us, and which, when we come in for it, we would never willingly renounce, no matter what tears it brings with it. Helena Langley had found that she was no longer a thoughtless, impulsive girl, but a real woman, with a heart and a hero and a love secret. She felt proud of her discovery. Columbus found out that he had a heart before he found out a new world; one wonders which discovery was the sweeter at the time.