ew, at any rate. For the others
she could not be sure. She greeted Donna Maria with a gentle
courtesy.

"We will delay dinner with pleasure," she said, "while my
waiting-woman attends on you."

During the few minutes before the Countess reappeared she conversed
gaily with one and another of her guests. Her face had told him
nothing, and her spirit rose on the assurance that, at least, she was
puzzling him.

Yet all the while she asked herself the same questions. Had he done
this to defy her? Or to sound her suspicions?

In part he was defying her; as he proved at table by talking freely
of the auto-da-fe. Donna Maria sat at his right hand, and added a
detail here and there to his description. The woman apparently had
no pity in her for the unhappy creatures she had seen slowly and
exquisitely murdered. Were they not heretics, serpents, enemies of
the true Faith?

"But ah!" she cried once with pretty affectation. "You make me
forget my manners! . . . Am I not, even now, talking of these things
among Lutherans? Your good lady, for instance?"

At the far end of the table, Ruth--speaking across Mr. Castres and
engaging Mrs. Hake's ear, lest it should be attracted by this
horrible conversation--discussed the coming war with France.
She upheld that the key of it lay in America. He maintained that
India held it--"Old England, you may trust her; money's her blood,
and the blood she scents in a fight. She'll fasten on India like a
bulldog." Colonel Arbuthnot applauded. "Where the treasure is,"
quoted Ruth, "there the heart is also. You give it a good British
paraphrase. . . . But her real blood--some of the best of it--beats
in America. There the French challenge her, and she'll have, spite
of herself, to take up the challenge. Montcalm! . . . He means to
build an empire there." "Pardon me"--Mr. Castres smiled
indulgently--"you are American born, and see all things American in
a high light. We skirmish there . . . backwoods fighting, you may
call it."

"With a richer India at the back of the woods. Oh! I trust England,
and Pitt, when his hour comes. England reminds me of Saul, always
going forth to discover a few asses and always in the end discovering
a kingdom. Other nations build the dream, dreams being no gift of
hers. Then she steps in, thrusts out the dreamers, inherits the
reality. America, though you laugh at it, has cost the best dreaming
of two nations--Spain first, and now France--and