“Oh, pretty well. I only see him at breakfast and dinner, and we talk about food and cooking and the servants. It’s all right when he is alone, but when he brings friends to dinner it is rather disagreeable. I understand German now and am able to make out the hateful things they say about us as a nation. Naturally I stick up for my own country. I talk to them in English—they gabble to me in German, and we make an awful clatter. Herr Krauss looks on, or joins in, and roars and bangs the table. I am fighting one to five, and with my back to the wall! They are full of facts that I cannot dispute—not being posted up in statistics. When I attempt to bring forward our side they interrupt and shout me down. Now we have declared open war. Last night I got up and left them in possession of the field, and I have told Herr Krauss that the next time he has a session I prefer to dine alone. He treats it as a splendid joke and says I am a silly, ignorant _Backfisch_.” “Of course, a lot of it is trade envy,” said Shafto; “but the Germans, to give them their due, are energetic, thrifty and pushing, and are taking places in the sun all over the world. Have you heard from Mrs. Milward lately?” “No, not for some weeks; she writes such amusing letters.” “So I should imagine. She has a wonderfully elastic mind, and says and does the very first thing that comes into her head. Do you remember one day on the _Blankshire_ when, half in joke, she said that we were two young lambs about to be turned out in strange and unknown pastures, and if one of us got into any difficulty the other was bound to help?” “Yes, I remember perfectly well. It was after Mr. Jones, the missionary, had been giving us a lecture on what he called ‘Pitfalls in the East.’” “Well, now I warn you that I’m going to be officious and interfering. I have a notion that you are in some difficulty. What Mrs. Milward said in joke I repeat in deadly earnest. If you are in any sort of hole, let me lend a hand.” “But why should you imagine that I am in any difficulty or, as you call it, ‘a hole’?” Sophy tried to carry it off gaily, but her eyes fell. “Because you look so changed and depressed and seem to have lost your spirits. Perhaps, as you have no bodily ailment, there is something on your mind?” “And who can minister to a mind diseased?” she quoted with a smile. “No, I’m really normal and absolutely sane.” “I wish you wouldn’t put me off,” he protested; “I know there _is_ something.” “Even if there were, do you expect me to make you my Father Confessor?” “No, indeed; but I do think you might give us a hint—I mean your friends—of what it is that has come between us.” For a moment she found it difficult to answer. At last she said: “Well, there _is_ something, I admit; something that claims all my time. I am sorry I cannot tell you more, for it is not my own secret.” “I see—it belongs to another.”