"You are content to buy and to sell and to make money? to rest at ease and let the men who love their country and their king fight for you and for their ideals?" Her voice had suddenly become trenchant and hard, her manner contemptuous--at strange variance with the indifferent kindliness wherewith she had hitherto seemed to regard her father's English guest. Certainly her nerves--he thought--were very much on edge, and no doubt his own always unruffled calm--the combined product of temperament, nationality and education--had an irritating effect upon her. Had he not been so intensely sorry for her, he would have resented this final taunt of hers--an arrow shot this time with intent to wound. But as it was he merely said with a smile: "Surely, Mademoiselle, my contentment with my own lot, and any other feelings of which I may be possessed, are of such very little consequence--seeing that they are only the feelings of a very commonplace tradesman--that they are not worthy of being discussed." Then as quickly her manner changed: the contemptuous look vanished from her eyes, the sarcastic curl from her lips, and with one of those quick transitions of mood which were perhaps the principal charm of Crystal de Cambray's personality, she looked up at Bobby with a winning smile and an appeal for forgiveness. "Your pardon, Sir," she said softly. "I was shrewish and ill-tempered, and deserve a severe lesson in courtesy. I did not mean to be disagreeable," she added with a little sigh, "but my nerves are all a-quiver to-day and this awful news has weighed upon my spirit. . . ." "What awful news, Mademoiselle?" he asked. "Surely you have heard?" "You mean the news about Napoleon . . . ?" "I mean the awful certainty," she retorted with a sudden outburst of vehemence, "that that brigand, that usurper, that scourge of mankind has escaped from an all too lenient prison where he should never have been confined, seeing how easy was escape from it. I mean that all the horrors of the past twenty years will begin again now, misery, starvation, exile probably. Oh, surely," she added with ever-increasing passion, "surely God will not permit such an awful thing to happen; surely he will strike the ogre dead, ere he devastates France once again!" "I am afraid that you must not reckon quite so much on divine interference, Mademoiselle. A nation--like every single individual--must shape its own destiny, and must not look to God to help it in its political aims." "And France must look once more to England, I suppose. It is humiliating to be always in need of help," she said with an impatient little sigh. "Each nation in its turn has it in its power to help a sister. Sometimes help may come from the weaker vessel. Do you remember the philosopher's fable of the lion and the mouse? France may be the mouse just now--some day it may be in her power to requite the lion."