the ancestral home, but it was
hardly necessary that he should lie in hiding like a negro slave
dreading the hounds upon his track. And yet, as he recalled the sudden
glimpse of Dick's face, Selwyn remembered that there had been a hunted
look in the dark-shadowed, luminous eyes. Vaguely he felt that this
new development would hinder the understanding reached by Elise and
himself during the evening. If only he could go to her and offer his
help or solace; or if she would come to him frankly and let him share
the unhappy secret, whatever it was, it might prove a bond of
comradeship instead of another element to deepen her consciousness of
aloofness.

Still churning these various thoughts, he smiled his greetings to her,
and affecting an easy unconcern, took his part in the fashionable
agricultural conversation which marks the morning intercourse of
country-living gentle-folk. If it had not been that the pigs mentioned
were Lord Fitz-Guff's, and the cabbages Lady Dingworthy's--and the
accents of the speakers beyond question--Selwyn could have imagined
that he was sitting around Hank Myer's stove in Doanville, N.Y.,
listening to the gossip of the local Doanvillians on earth's produce.

'Ah,' said Lord Durwent, sighting a messenger from over the egg-timer,
'here are the papers.'

Directly afterwards the butler entered with the four morning journals,
solemnly presented them to his master (with a little more dignity than
a Foreign Minister displays in handing the ambassador of an enemy
country his passports), then made his exit with his eyes sedately
raised, to avoid noting more than was necessary of the 'behind-stage'
aspect of his domain.

'Hello!' said Lord Durwent, perusing the _Morning Post_; 'what's this?
Austria has delivered an ultimatum to Servia.'

'What!' cried one of the ladies; 'over that unpronounceable
assassination?'

'Dear me!' said the woman who kept record of retired royalties, 'that
will upset my dear friend Empress----'

But her voice was lost in the clamour, as every one, deserting
breakfast, crowded about Lord Durwent, and half in jest demanded to
know what the ramshackle empire had to say for itself.

In a voice that grew tremulous with anger, the host read the details,
point by point, and as the seriousness of the thing broke upon the
hearers, even the very lightest tongues were for the moment stilled.

With a frown the nobleman looked up as he reached the end of the
ultimatum, in which