o barbarism: that to go
to Guatemala was equivalent to accepting a yellow fever--it was courting
disease, perhaps death; that my insistence was a mere mockery, in the worst
possible taste; but that I had already agreed with Lord Danesbury,
our engagement should be cancelled; that his lordship's memory of our
conversation would corroborate me in saying I had no intention to propose
such a sacrifice to her; and indeed I had but provoked her to say the very
things, and use the very arguments, I had already employed to myself as a
sort of aid to my own heartfelt convictions. Here would be a "change of
front" with a vengeance.

'She will already have written off the whole interview: the despatch is
finished,' cried he, after a moment. 'It is a change of front the day after
the battle. The people will read of my manoeuvre with the bulletin of
victory before them.

'Poor Frank Touchet used to say,' cried he aloud, '"Whenever they refuse
my cheques at the Bank, I always transfer my account"; and fortunately the
world is big enough for these tactics for several years. That's a change of
front too, if I knew how to adapt it. I must marry another woman--there's
nothing else for it. It is the only escape; and the question is, who shall
she be?' The more he meditated over this change of front the more he saw
that his destiny pointed to the Greek. If he could see clearly before him
to a high career in diplomacy, the Greek girl, in everything but fortune,
would suit him well. Her marvellous beauty, her grace of manner, her social
tact and readiness, her skill in languages, were all the very qualities
most in request. Such a woman would make the full complement, by her
fascinations, of all that her husband could accomplish by his abilities.
The little indiscretions of old men--especially old men--with these women,
the lapses of confidence they made them, the dropping admissions of this or
that intention, made up what Walpole knew to be high diplomacy.

'Nothing worth hearing is ever got by a man,' was an adage he treasured as
deep wisdom. Why kings resort to that watering-place, and accidentally meet
certain Ministers going somewhere else; why kaisers affect to review troops
here, that they may be able to talk statecraft there; how princely compacts
and contracts of marriage are made at sulphur springs; all these and
such like leaked out as small-talk with a young and pretty woman, whose
frivolity of manner went bail for the safety of