y-chair, smoking one of the long, thin cigars
which were his particular fancy.

"Your Excellency," Dominey said, "there is just one fallacy in all that
you have said."

"A fallacy?"

"You have come to the absolute conclusion," Dominey continued, "that
because England wants peace there will be peace. I am of Seaman's mind.
I believe in the ultimate power of the military party of Germany. I
believe that in time they will thrust their will upon the Kaiser, if he
is not at the present moment secretly in league with them. Therefore, I
believe that there will be war."

"If I shared that belief with you, my friend," the Ambassador said
quietly, "I should consider my position here one of dishonour. My
mandate is for peace, and my charge is from the Kaiser's lips."

Stephanie, with the air of one a little weary of the conversation, broke
away from a distant group and came towards them. Her beautiful eyes
seemed tired, she moved listlessly, and she even spoke with less than
her usual assurance.

"Am I disturbing a serious conversation?" she asked. "Send me away if I
am."

"His Excellency and I," Dominey observed, "have reached a cul-de-sac
in our argument,--the blank wall of good-natured but fundamental
disagreement."

"Then I shall claim you for a while," Stephanie declared, taking
Dominey's arm. "Lady Dominey has attracted all the men to her circle,
and I am lonely."

The Prince bowed.

"I deny the cul-de-sac," he said, "but I yield our host! I shall seek my
opponent at billiards."

He turned away and Stephanie sank into his vacant place.

"So you and my cousin," she remarked, as she made room for Dominey to
sit by her side, "have come to a disagreement."

"Not an unfriendly one," her host assured her.

"That I am sure of. Maurice seems, indeed, to have taken a wonderful
liking to you. I cannot remember that you ever met before, except for
that day or two in Saxony?"

"That is so. The first time I exchanged any intimate conversation with
the Prince was in London. I have the utmost respect and regard for him,
but I cannot help feeling that the pleasant intimacy to which he has
admitted me is to a large extent owing to the desire of our friends
in Berlin. So far as I am concerned I have never met any one, of any
nation, whose character I admire more."

"Maurice lives his life loftily. He is one of the few great aristocrats
I have met who carries his nobility of birth into his simplest thought
and action. Th