"Do I suppose? Why, everybody knows it. Colonel Baron knows it. There can't be any reasonable doubt about the matter. The Treaty of Amiens is practically at an end already. Nap has broken his pledges again and again. And this last demand of his—why, nothing could be more iniquitous."
"Dear me, has he made any fresh demand?" Mrs. Baron's eyes went in appeal to her husband, for she had no great faith in Mrs. Bryce's judgment. The Colonel had no chance of responding.
"Even you can't sure have forgot that, my dear Harriette! He desires that we should give over to his tender mercies the unfortunate Bourbon Princes who have fled to us for refuge. And no doubt in the end he would demand all the refugees of the Revolution. He might as well demand England herself! And he will demand that too, in no long time. 'Tis an open secret that he is already making preparations for the invasion of our country."
"Boney does not believe that England, single-handed, will dare to oppose him," remarked Mr. Bryce. "He considers that a nation of seventeen million inhabitants is certain to go down before a nation of forty millions."
"Let him but come, and he'll learn his mistake," declared the valiant lady. "But you, Harriette—with public affairs in this state—you positively intend to let your crazy husband drag you across the Channel!"
"But I do not think my husband crazy, and I wish very much to go," she said, slightly pouting. "I have never been out of England. The wars have always hindered me, when I could have gone."
"And you absolutely mean to take the young ones, too!"
"We intend to take Roy," said the Colonel, as his wife's eyes once more appealed to him.
"I never heard such a scheme in my life! To take the boy away from his schooling—"
"No; his school has just been broken up for some weeks. Several cases of smallpox; so it is considered best."