with you. All I ask is that mother shall be allowed
to stay in her own room while I am out, and have her meals served
there. But the hotel people are beginning to make a fuss about the
trouble, the lack of waiters. A word from you--And then if my mind
was at ease about her I could go out and do some good with the poor
people. They are getting very restive in the Marolles quarter--the
shocking bad bread, the lack of fuel--Most of all I should like to
help in the hospitals. My own countrywomen will not have me in
theirs. They suspect me of being a spy in German pay. Besides, your
von Bissing has ordered now that all Belgian, British, and French
wounded shall be taken to the German Red Cross. Well: if you want
to be kind, give me an introduction there. Surely it would be bare
humanity on your part to let an Englishwoman be with some of those
poor lads who are sorely wounded, dying perhaps"--she broke
down--"The other day I followed two of the motor ambulances along
the Boulevard d'Anspach. Blood dripped from them as they passed, and
I could hear some English boy trying to sing 'Tipperary--'"

"My _tear_ Miss Warren--I will try to do all that you want--You will
not do _anything I_ want, but never mind. I will show you that
Germans can be generous. I will speak about your mother. I am sorry
that there are bad-mannered Germans in the hotel. There are
some--what-you-call 'bounders'--among us, as there are with you. It
is to be regretted. As to our Red Cross hospitals, I know of a
person who can make things easy for you. I will write a letter to my
cousin--like me she is a Saxon and comes from Leipzig--Minna von
Stachelberg. She is but a few months widow, widow of a Saxon
officer, Graf von Stachelberg who was killed at Namur. Oh! it was
very sad; they were but six months married. Afterwards she came here
to work in our Red Cross--I think now she is in charge of a ward..."

So Vivie found a few months' reprieve from acute sorrow and bitter
humiliation. Graefin von Stachelberg was as kind in her way as her
cousin the Colonel, but much less sentimental. In fact she was of
that type of New German woman, taken all too little into account by
our Press at the time of the War. There were many like her of the
upper middle class, the professorial class, the lesser nobility to
be found not only in Leipzig but in Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfort,
Halle, Bonn, Muenchen, Hannover, Bremen, Jena, Stuttgart,
Cologne--nice to look at, extremely mode