But in August, when the impossible had happened, when Germany had invaded Belgium, and France had moved to her eastern frontier, and Russia was pouring into Prussia, and English troops were on foreign continental soil for the first time in fifty years, Hugh's indifference grew painful. He was perhaps not more indifferent than any one else with whom I was thrown, but to me he seemed so because he was so near me. He read the papers; he took a sporting interest in the daily events; but it resembled--to my mind at least--the interest of an eighteenth-century farmer's lad excited at a cockfight. It was somewhat in the spirit of "Go it, old boy!" to each side indifferently. If he took sides at all it was rather on that to which Cissie Boscobel and I were nationally opposed; but this, we agreed, was to tease us. So far as opinions of his own were concerned, he was neutral. He meant by that that he didn't care a jot who lost or who won, so long as America was out of the fray and could eat its bread in safety. "There are more important things than safety," I said to him, scornfully, one day. "Such as--" But when I gave him what seemed to me the truisms of life he was contented to laugh in my face. Cissie Boscobel was more patient with him than I was. I have always admired in the English that splendid tolerance which allows to others the same liberty of thinking they claim for themselves; but in this instance I had none of it. Hugh was too much a part of myself. When he said, as he was fond of saying, "If Germany gets at poor degenerate old England she'll crumple her up," Lady Cissie could fling him a pitying, confident smile, with no venom in it whatever, while I became bitter or furious. Fortunately, Mr. Brokenshire was called to New York on business connected with the war, so that his dear Alexandra was delivered for a while from his daily condescensions. Though Hugh didn't say so in actual words, I inferred that the struggle would further enrich the house of Meek & Brokenshire. Of the vast sums it would handle a commission would stick to its fingers, and if the business grew too heavy for the usual staff to deal with Hugh's own energies were to be called into play. His father, he told me, had said so. It would be an eye-opener to Cousin Andrew Brew, he crowed, to see him helping to finance the European War within a year after that slow-witted nut had had the hardihood to refuse him!