"As an Englishman, I curse!" the squire retorted, shaking his fist in the air. "It was a cowardly thing to do. We were ready and waiting for war. Every man of us had put his best foot forward. All my young fellows were learning to shoot and ride—I spent a small fortune on ’em; and now, what’s the good? Their time and my money thrown clean away, and the humiliation of it all into the bargain! And to think we might have thrashed those confounded ruffians and settled them once and for all!" He paced up and down, grinding his teeth, and Nora’s eyes followed him with a critical wonder. By a swift turn of the imagination, she was again in that huge crowd, watching company after company of trained men as they tramped past in stern, resolute silence. Was it possible that this great blundering squire could talk of thrashing that mighty force with men who were learning to shoot and ride? Was it possible that she had ever thought as he thought? He stopped in front of her, with his legs apart, and fixed her with a fierce, choleric stare. "Come now, Miss Nora," he said, "you have been out there and know the blackguards. You must have hated ’em pretty well to have thrown up everything and come home?" Something like an electric shock passed through Nora’s body. "I—hate them?" she stammered. "Yes; Miles has been telling me the whole story. No offence meant, of course; but between such old friends as you and I, it was a d——d mistake to have married that foreign fellow. I always said so, didn’t I, Parson?" The Rev. John sighed resignedly. "I said so myself," he answered; "but they were so determined that I could do nothing. It was a terrible blow to me." "It made me sick when I was there," Miles interposed viciously, "to think that I had to be civil to those boors because my sister had married one of them. I tell you, I blessed the war. It gave one the chance to pay back." "You! What could _you_ have done?" The question came from Nora, and her voice sounded curiously unsteady. Miles nodded. "I could have done a lot more than you think, my dear sister," he said pointedly. "I could have put more than one spoke in your fine baron’s wheel if I had chosen. And glad I should have been to have done it—swaggering bully that he was!" "Miles—you forget—you are speaking of my husband!" She was leaning a little forward. Her cheeks were hot and her eyes alight with a passion which should have warned him. But Miles merely laughed. "Your husband? My dear girl, I expect he has divorced you by now as a runaway and I don’t know what else besides. They are pretty summary with that sort of thing in the Fatherland. Imagine"—he turned to the squire—"they treat their women-folk like underpaid servants. The fine gentlemen go about in their many-coloured coats, and the wives can patch together what they can on nothing a year. Poor wretches!" "They don’t mind," Nora put in sharply.