'Is that indeed so? A surprising race, you English. Very surprising. You assume or bequeath very lightly the mantle of government, do you not? Am I to understand that you have permanently replaced your cousin in the--ah!--presidency of Hagios Zacharie?' 'My cousin is asleep; there is no reason why you should not speak to me in his absence.' 'Asleep? but I must see him, mademoiselle.' 'If you will wait until he wakes.' 'Hours, possibly!' 'We will send to wake him in an hour's time. Can I not entertain you until then?' she suggested, her natural coquetry returning. She left the wall against which she had been leaning, and, coming across to Malteios, gave him her fingers with a smile. The ex-Premier had always figured picturesquely in her world. 'Mademoiselle,' he said, kissing the fingers she gave him, 'you are as delightful as ever, I am assured.' They sat, Malteios impatient and ill at ease, unwilling to forego his urbanity, yet tenacious of his purpose. In the midst of the compliments he perfunctorily proffered, he broke out,-- 'Children! _Ces gosses.... Mais il est fou, voyons, votre cousin_. What is he thinking about? He has created a ridiculous disturbance; well, let that pass; we overlook it, but this persistence.... Where is it all to end? Obstinacy feeds and grows fat upon obstinacy; submission grows daily more impossible, more remote. His pride is at stake. A threat, well and good; let him make his threat; he might then have arrived at some compromise. I, possibly, might myself have acted as mediator between him and my friend and rival, Gregori Stavridis. In fact, I am here to-day in the hope that my effort will not come too late. But after so much fighting! Tempers run high no doubt in the Islands, and I can testify that they run high in Herakleion. Anastasia--probably you know this already--Madame Kato's flat is wrecked. Yes, the mob. We are obliged to keep a cordon of police always before your uncle's house. Neither he nor your father and mother dare to show themselves at the windows. It is a truly terrible state of affairs.' He reverted to the deeper cause of his resentment,-- 'I could have mediated, in the early days, so well between your cousin and Gregori Stavridis. Pity, pity, pity!' he said, shaking his head and smiling his benign, regretful smile that to-day was tinged with a barely concealed bitterness, 'a thousand pities, mademoiselle.' He began again, his mind on Herakleion,--