me guest may
carefully handle a gold snuff-box, a miniature, or a bit of old Delft,
the things could scarcely need washing; but the rule is to have them out
once a month, and it would be a crime to break it. This Freule Menela
explained in a low voice, and with the suspicion of a smile, as if she
wished the two girls from London to understand that she was able to see
the humorous side of these things.

"Your cousins are old-fashioned," she went on, "though dear people; I've
known them since I was a child, and am fond of them for their own sakes
as well as Robert's. You must not think that everybody in our country
dines at five. For instance, if you visited in my set at The Hague, you
would find things more as they are in France. When Robert and I are
married _I_ shall manage the house."

We listened civilly, but liked her none the better for her disavowal of
van Buren ways.

"Horrid, snobbish, disloyal little wretch," said Phil, afterwards,
quite viciously. "Your cousin's a hundred times too good and too
good-looking for her; but she doesn't know that. She fancies herself
superior, and thinks she's condescending to ally herself with the
family. I do believe she's marrying your cousin for his money, and if
she could get a chance to do better according to her ideas, she'd throw
him over."

"It isn't likely she'll ever have another chance of any sort," said I;
"Robert won't get rid of his bargain easily."

"She's going with us this morning, and makes a favor of it," went on
Phil. "She says she's tired to death of the pictures; but I'm sure ten
wild horses wouldn't keep her at home."

Be that as it may, the power of twenty wild horses in motor form rushed
her away in our society and that of her fiance.

In the beautiful forest, which I was happy in seeing again, we threaded
intricate, dark avenues, and came at last (as if we had been a whole
party of tourist princes in the tale of the "Sleeping Beauty") to the
House in the Wood.

The romance of the place grew in my eyes, because a princess built it to
please her husband, and because the husband was that son of William the
Silent who best carried on his father's plans for Holland's greatness.
I'm afraid I cared more about it for the sake of Princess Amalia and
Frederic Henry of Orange, than for the sake of the Peace Conference,
because the Conference was modern; and it was of the princess I thought
as we passed through room after room of the charming old house, hid