"This country is neutral," said Mrs. Balfame severely. "It regards all the belligerents as barbarians tarred with the same brush. You Germans are so excitable that you imagine we hate when we merely don't care." This was intended to be soothing, but Frieda's brow darkened and she thrust out her pugnacious lips. "Germany, she is the greatest country in the whole world," she announced. "All the world--it muss know that." "How familiar that sounds! Just a slight variation on the old American brag that is quite a relief." Mrs. Balfame spoke as lightly as if she merely had let down the bars of her dignity out of sympathy with a lacerated Teuton. "Well, go back to your Germany, Frieda, if you can get there, but don't try to blackmail me again. I have no five hundred dollars to give you if I would. If you choose, you may stay your month out, and spend your evenings taking up a collection among your German friends. You are excused." She had achieved her purpose. The girl's practical mind was puzzled by the simple explanation of her mistress' presence in the kitchen, deeply impressed by the contemptuous refusal to be blackmailed. Her shoulders drooped and she slunk out of the room. For a moment Mrs. Balfame clung, reeling, to the back of a chair. Then she went downstairs and telephoned to Dwight Rush. CHAPTER XVI The young lawyer was to call at eight o'clock. Mrs. Balfame put on her best black blouse in his honour; it was cut low about the throat and softened with a rolling collar of hemstitched white lawn. This was as far in the art of sex allurement as she was prepared to go; the bare idea of a negligee of white lace and silk, warmed by rose-colored shades, would have filled her with cold disgust. She was not a religious woman, but she had her standards. At a quarter of eight she made a careful inspection of the lower rooms; sleuths, professional and amateur, would not hesitate to sneak into her house and listen at keyholes. She inferred that the house was under surveillance, for she had looked from her window several times and seen the same man sauntering up and down that end of the avenue. No doubt some one watched the back doors also. Convinced that her home was still sacrosanct, she placed two chairs at a point in the parlour farthest from the doors leading into the hall, and into a room beyond which Mr. Balfame had used as an office. The doors, of course, would be open throughout the interview. No one should be able to say that she had shut herself up with a young man; on the other hand, it was the duty of the deceased husband's lawyer to call on the widow. Even if those young devils discovered that she had telephoned for him, what more regular than that she should wish to consult her lawyer after such insinuations? Rush arrived as the town clock struck eight. Frieda, who answered the door in her own good time, surveyed him suspiciously through a narrow aperture to which she applied one eye.