t 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 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.

CHAPTER II

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 Fraeulein 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