to see out past the golf links.
“There goes a man,” Terniloff murmured, “whom lately I have found changed. When I first came here he met me quite openly. I believe, even now, he is sincerely desirous of peace and amicable relations between our two countries, and yet something has fallen between us. I cannot tell what it is. I cannot tell even of what nature it is, but I have an instinct for people’s attitude towards me, and the English are the worst race in the world at hiding their feelings. Has Mr. Watson, I wonder come under the spell of your connection, the Duke of Worcester? He seemed so friendly with both of us down in Norfolk.”
Their womenkind left them at that moment to talk to some acquaintances seated a short distance way. Mr. Watson, passing within a few yards of them, was brought to a standstill by Dominey’s greeting. They talked for a moment or two upon idle subjects.
“Your news, I trust, continues favourable?” the Ambassador remarked, observing the etiquette which required him to be the first to leave the realms of ordinary conversation.
“It is a little negative in quality,” the other answered, after a moment’s hesitation. “I am summoned to Downing Street again at six o’clock.”
“I have already confided the result of my morning despatches to the Prime Minister,” Terniloff observed.
“I went through them before I came down here,” was the somewhat doubtful reply.
“You will have appreciated, I hope, their genuinely pacific tone?” Terniloff asked anxiously.
His interlocutor bowed and then drew himself up. It was obvious that the strain of the last few days was telling upon him. There were lines about his mouth, and his eyes spoke of sleepless nights.
“Words are idle things to deal with at a time like this,” he said. “One thing, however, I will venture to say to you, Prince, here and under these circumstances. There will be no war unless it be the will of your country.”
Terniloff was for a moment unusually pale. It was an episode of unrecorded history. He rose to his feet and raised his hat.
“There will be no war,” he said solemnly.
The Cabinet Minister passed on with a lighter step. Dominey, more clearly than ever before, understood the subtle policy which had chosen for his great position a man as chivalrous and faithful and yet as simple-minded as Terniloff. He looked after the retreating figure of the Cabinet Minister with a slight smile at the corner of his lips.
“In a time like this,” he remarked significantly, “one begins to understand why one of our great writers—was it Bernhardi, I wonder?—has written that no island could ever breed a race of diplomatists.”
“The seas which engirdle this island,” the Ambassador said thoughtfully, “have brought the English great weal, as they may bring to her much woe. The too-nimble brain of the diplomat has its parallel of insincerity in the people whose interests he seems to guard. I believe in the honesty of the English politicians, I have placed that belief on record in the small volume of memoirs which I shall presently entrust to you. But we talk too seriously for a summer afternoon. Let us illustrate to the world our opinion of the political situation and play another nine holes at golf.”
Dominey rose willingly to his feet, and the two men strolled away towards the first tee.
“By the by,” Terniloff asked, “what of our cheerful little friend Seaman? He ought to be busy just now.”
“Curiously enough, he is returning from Germany to-night,” Dominey announced. “I expect him at Berkeley square. He is coming direct to me.”
CHAPTER XXVI
These were days, to all dwellers in London, of vivid impressions, of poignant memories, reasserting themselves afterwards with a curious sense of unreality, as though belonging to another set of days and another world. Dominey long remembered his dinner that evening in the sombre, handsomely furnished dining-room of his town house in Berkeley Square. Although it lacked the splendid proportions of the banqueting hall at Dominey, it was still a fine apartment, furnished in the Georgian period, with some notable pictures upon the walls, and with a wonderful ceiling and fireplace. Dominey and Rosamund dined alone, and though the table had been reduced to its smallest proportions, the space between them was yet considerable. As soon as Parkins had gravely put the port upon the table, Rosamund rose to her feet and, instead of leaving the room, pointed for the servant to place a chair for her by Dominey’s side.
“I shall be like your men friends, Everard,” she declared, “when the ladies have left, and draw up to your side. Now what do we do? Tell stories? I promise you that I will be a wonderful listener.”
“First of all you drink half a glass of this port,” he declared, filling her glass, “then you peel me one of those peaches, and we divide it. After which we listen for a ring at the bell. To-night I expect a visitor.”
“A visitor?”
“Not a social one,” he assured her. “A matter of business which I fear will take me from you for the rest of the evening. So let us make the most of the time until he comes.”
She commenced her task with the peach, talking to him all the time a little gravely, a sweet and picturesque picture of a graceful and very desirable woman, her delicate shape and artistic fragility more than ever accentuated by the sombreness of the background.
“Do you know, Everard,” she said, “I am so happy in London here with you, and I feel all the time so strong and well. I can read and understand the books which were a maze of print to me before. I can see the things in the pictures, and feel the thrill of the music, which seemed to come to me, somehow, before, all dislocated and discordant. You understand, dear?”
“Of course,” he answered gravely.
“I do not wonder,” she went on, “that Doctor Harrison is proud of me for a patient, but there are many times when I feel a dull pain in my heart, because I know that, whatever he or anybody else might say, I am not quite cured.”
“Rosamund dear,” he protested.
“Ah, but don’t interrupt,” she insisted, depositing his share of the peach upon his plate. “How can I be cured when all the time there is the problem of you, the problem which I am just as far off solving as ever I was? Often I find myself comparing you with the Everard whom I married.”
“Do I fail so often to come up to his standard?” he asked.
“You never fail,” she answered, looking at him with brimming eyes. “Of course, he was very much more affectionate,” she went on, after a moment’s pause. “His kisses were not like yours. And he was far fonder of having me with him. Then, on the other hand, often when I wanted him he was not there, he did wild things, mad things; he seemed to forget me altogether. It was that,” she went on, “that was so terrible. It was that which made me so nervous. I think that I should even have been able to stand those awful moments when he came back to me, covered with blood and reeling, if it had not been that I was already almost a wreck. You know, he killed Roger Unthank that night. That is why he was never able to come back.”
“Why do you talk
