Sir William and Napier returned to London to face those days of intolerable suspense, when men carried about like a waking nightmare the new proof that an impregnable fortress was a thing of the past. The defenses of LiÈge had failed. A vast system of forts had been pounded into ruin. Through breach after breach, the German hosts were pouring. People far away from the scenes of carnage and chaos woke in the night under a clutch of dread. What is it? What's the matter with life? The Germans! On and on they were coming, and nothing, it seemed, could stop them.

Then came the Mons retreat and the Battle of the Marne. Belgium was in ruins, but the German flood had been stayed. Sir William, worn and aged after a second heart attack, carefully concealed from every one except the doctor, and Gavan came down from London to spend Saturday night and Sunday at the place he had taken on the Essex coast. Apart from public anxieties, Sir William had been subject to the annoyance of questions in the House, about his chauffeur—a member of his Majesty's Government couldn't be driven about by an unnaturalized German. A new chauffeur had brought Sir William from town.

"Do say you are going to like the house, William, dear!" his wife implored on the familiar note, before he had time to see anything beyond the entrance and the drawing-room. "Remember how little time we had to find anything near enough for you. But talk about it's being a furnished house!"

"Great luck to find such a place," Napier reassured her. "How did you hear of it?"

Lady McIntyre shook her head, as with an effort to shake some clear recollection out of the inner disorder. "We heard of so many! But this—I think Greta saw an advertisement somewhere about this one. I had to come and do the inspecting because of that silliness about getting a permit for Greta."

"Seems all right," said Sir William, rattling his seals as he joined Napier in the bay-window.

"Well, you wouldn't have said that if you'd seen it as those people left it. When I went back to Kirklamont, I told Greta, the hideous bareness—oh, it would never do! But she simply insisted on my going to bed." Lady McIntyre smiled at confession of that helplessness which for long years had, after her beauty, been her strongest card. "Greta said everything would be all right. You had arranged about the silly permit, and the very next day she came down, all by herself, and just took hold."

Sir William glanced at Napier, as he asked his wife where Miss Greta was now.

"She's closing up Kirklamont. That is, she has closed it up. They're coming at five forty-five, Greta and the children and Miss Ellis. I've come to like that Ellis girl. And I believe Madge has, too, though she won't say so."

Sir William had been walking about, opening doors, looking out of windows. "Seems the very thing. Capital view, too! I congratulate you, my dear."

She beamed, "Don't congratulate me. It's Greta."

"Even the chairs are just right!" Sir William sank down in one by the open French window.

Lady McIntyre laughed, delighted. "It's your own chair! out of the library at Kirklamont."

"Never!" said Sir William, staring down at the arms, first on one side and then on the other.

"Greta said you'd be glad of your own special chair when you came home tired!"

"Well, she's right." He abandoned himself a moment to the embrace of his old friend.

"I knew you'd be surprised!" Lady McIntyre pattered on. "I was. I should have thought of chairs and things myself, if it hadn't been called 'a furnished house.' And charged for as a furnished house! But I should never have thought of furnishing a furnished—And even if I had, I should have been appalled at the idea of packing up heavy furniture and moving it about this way. Linen and silver, of course, and a few vases, and my china cats, just to give a feeling of home, but a thing like a great hulking arm-chair with a reading desk—!"

"Yes," Sir William indulged her, "I should as soon have thought of hoicking up my bed."

"Your bed has been hoicked up," she triumphed. "Greta didn't forget you were very particular about your bed."

"You don't say so."

"Oh, yes. You said once the reason you'd never been back to Germany was because of the beds. I was afraid at the time she'd feel that. But you see how beautifully she's taken it. And what about the war, William?" she said, in exactly the same tone.

Sir William was feeling absently for his cigar-case. "Are they still slaughtering those poor Belgians? Matches? I'm sure there must be matches somewhere." She got up and looked vaguely about the big room, as though she expected the matches to come running like a dog that hears its name called. "Anybody but Greta might forget a little thing like that. There! I told you so!" she exclaimed, as Napier produced a box from the far side of the clock. "What do you say, Mr. Napier? Will it be over by Christmas? Greta is sure it will."

"H'm! H'm! About Miss Greta,"—Sir William struck in with that same exchange of glances the name had called forth at the beginning. "Gavan and I met the inspector of police as we came through the station. New broom. In a great taking. He'd been hauled over the coals, it seems, by an old retired colonel hereabouts—fella called McManus. Has a place a little way down the coast. These retired men are the devil. They don't know they're retired. This fella McManus got wind of a German lady who was here for a week and who, he said, went about poking her nose everywhere."

"She had to poke her nose to get housemaids and an odd man. But McManus! He must be an old horror."

"Well, that's what he said, 'Poking her nose everywhere,' when he lodged his complaint with the inspector. Very decent fella, the inspector."

"Lodged a complaint!" Lady McIntyre echoed. "Against a member of our household."

"Yes, yes. It's all right. I told the inspector we knew all about Miss von Schwarzenberg, and could absolutely vouch for her."

"Here she is," said Napier from the window.

In another minute Madge and Bobby were bursting in, followed by the other two. Miss von Schwarzenberg, wearing a new look of subdued triumph. The American, eager, stirred, smiling in Napier's direction, and yet far from seeming as happy as the girl adored by Julian should be.

Madge and Bobby filled the room with their accounts of the queer journey, the long stoppages, the waiting for government trains to pass, and the way the troops seemed to be moving about the country.

"Miss Greta thought it wasn't soldiers," Bobby threw in. "She says, coal for the fleet."

"That was only at first," Madge defended Miss Greta, "before we found out that we were held up for another—a perfectly thrilling reason! But it's a dead secret, isn't it, Miss Greta?"

"The deadest kind," she answered, as she bent her head for Nan to unpin her veil.

"Russians!" said Madge in a loud stage whisper. "They're sending armies of 'em."

"Russians?" Lady McIntyre blinked rapidly and looked at the door in a perturbed way.

"Yes, to fight the—" Bobby turned tactfully to his father. "I'll be bound you know all about it."

"Not a syllable."

Madge laughed. "Dear old Daddy!" she said patronizingly. "Well, we know, so you needn't keep it up. And it's an awfully good dodge. Think of the surprise it'll be."

"It would be a surprise, right enough," her father admitted.

"You see," Bobby continued, to enlighten his mama, "the North Sea's full of mines, so they've shipped the Russian troops from Archangel, landed 'em in Scotland, and they're rushing 'em through England to the front."

Whether Sir William had any knowledge of this spirited proceeding or not, Bobby had plenty. He'd collected impressions on the journey.

Sir William was occupied in paying facetious tribute to Miss Greta for her manipulation of beds and arm-chairs. "Eh? what?" he interrupted himself to say to a footman whom he discovered unexpectedly behind the barrier of the reading-desk. "Didn't you hear? Tea for these ladies."

"Beg pardon, Sir William, but there's an inspector of police—"

"Inspector! What's he want now?"

"He—a—well, sir, he'd like to speak to you for a moment, sir."

Sir William rose rather testily and went out. He took the precaution to turn back and shut the door, after the footman had followed him across the threshold.

"Well," said Miss Greta brightly to Madge, "I am wondering whether you will like your room. You'll find it next mine. You remember the plan I drew?"

"Oh, yes. I'll go up after tea. Simply ravenous!"

Miss Greta bent toward the girl. "We aren't fit to sit down to tea."

Wildfire turned to protest. She seemed to read in the soft face a resolution no stranger would have detected either there, or in the words, "I'm going up too, in a minute. I'll come for you." Madge went quietly out.

Through the open window only the voices from the next room were audible, not the words. Lady McIntyre was all too aware of them.

Miss Greta joined Napier at the window. "Pretty view, don't you think?" She, too, listened to those accents in the next room.

As the door opened, her eyelids fluttered, but she never looked round. The footman was back again with an excuse instead of tea.

"It's the range, m'lady. It seems,"—hurriedly he appeared to apologize for a stove suspected of an untimely desire for taking a stroll—"it seems to 'ave gone hout. But the tea won't be long. And Sir William says will Miss von Sworsenburg kindly step into the next room."