ged her shoulders.

"Nothing directly," she replied, "but my rooms have been searched--even
my dressing-room at the Opera House. That man's spies are
simply wonderful. He seems able to plant them everywhere. And,
David!--"

"Yes, dear?"

"He has got hold of Lassen," she continued. "I am perfectly
certain of it."

"Then the sooner you get rid of Lassen, the better," Bellamy
declared.

"It is so difficult," she murmured, in a perplexed tone. "The man
has all my affairs in his hands. Up till now, although he is
uncomely, and a brute in many ways, he has served me well."

"If he is Streuss's creature he must go," Bellamy insisted.

She nodded.

"Let us sit down for a few minutes," she said. "I am tired."

She sank on to a seat and Bellamy sat by her side. In full view
of them was Buckingham Palace with its flag flying. She looked
thoughtfully at it and across to Westminster.

"Do they know, I wonder, your country-people?" she asked.

"Half-a-dozen of them, perhaps," he answered gloomily, no more.

"To-day," she declared, "I seem to have lost confidence. I seem to
feel the sense of impending calamity, to hear the guns as I walk,
to see the terror fall upon the faces of all these great crowds who
throng your streets. They are a stolid, unbelieving people--these.
The blow, when it comes, will be the harder."

Bellamy sighed.

"You are right," he said. "When one comes to think of it, it is
amazing. How long the prophets of woe have preached, and how
completely their teachings have been ignored! The invasion bogey
has been so long among us that it has become nothing but a jest.
Even I, in a way, am one of the unbelievers."

"You are not serious, David!" she exclaimed.

"I am," he affirmed. "I think that if we could read that document
we should see that there is no plan there for the immediate invasion
of England. I think you would find that the blow would be struck
simultaneously at our Colonies. We should either have to submit or
send a considerable fleet away from home waters. Then, I presume,
the question of invasion would come again. All the time, of course,
the gage would be flung down, treaties would be defied, we should be
scorned as though we were a nation of weaklings. Austria would
gather in what she wanted, and there would be no one to interfere."

Louise was very pale but her eyes were flashing fire.

"It is the most terrible thing which has happened in history," she
said,