So to the Grand, and sumptuous rooms and meals, though the very trim young gentleman in the office and the pompous head-waiter did look somewhat superciliously at their lack in the matter of wedding-garments. But breeding tells where uttermost perfection in attire without it makes no headway at all, and by the time dinner was over they were on the best of terms with their nearest neighbours, who were delighted to find someone who had had no news of the world’s doings for several days and were therefore eager and receptive listeners. And afterwards they sat in the lounge while a Canon, and a Doctor, and a Barrister, and a Colonel on the retired list,--who knew Uncle Tony very well by repute and asked Ray at once if he were related to Sir Anthony Luard as soon as he heard his name,--and several of their wives and daughters, fed them volubly with fairy-tales and fictions, some of which had some small substratum of fact, but mostly they were snowball legends which had grown out of all knowledge as they passed from mouth to mouth. Their latest English papers were three days old. Swiss and German papers they had as late as July 30, but the news in them was for the most part vague and unsatisfying to souls that craved simple actual fact as to what was going on behind the veiled frontiers. Local letters were arriving, but none from England since July 28. Lois and Ray sat and listened but got little from all the talk that went on. The general opinion--to which the Colonel stoutly refused to conform--was that things looked decidedly unpleasant but that, somehow or other, Great Britain would manage not to be drawn into any such awful mess as a European war. Sir Edward Grey had handled the Balkan affair admirably, and though they were all on the opposite side in politics, they one and all,--not excepting even the Colonel--acknowledged that he was the very best possible man for his difficult and delicate post. The Colonel however dogmatically prophesied war all round. “We can no more get out of it,” he said warmly, “than we can any of us get home for some months to come.” “Do you really think we can’t get home?” asked Lois anxiously. “Think--my dear young lady?--I’m as sure of it as I am that I’m sitting here and expect to be still sitting here, or somewhere in this neighbourhood, two months hence. You see,”--and he proceeded to prove, beyond any possibility of doubt, that--granted the general war he was so certain of--every outlet--north, east, west, and south,--would be already blocked by the urgencies of mobilisation, and that until all the troops of the various nations were massed along the frontiers traffic across the denuded countries behind would be out of the question. “Martial law everywhere,” said he, “and thank God we’re not in Germany!” “There won’t be any difficulty in getting about in Switzerland, I suppose,” said Ray.