“I found no one who wanted a game,” he said. “I only drove down on the chance.”
“But you often do that, and you always find someone else who wants a game. It is very odd that you should not be able to get a game. Was there nobody down there?”
“Ah, do not go on about it, dearest,” he said. “I could not get a game, and so I returned. What does it all matter? You are settled in town, Lady Grote?”
“Yes, and Helen is going to help me with my ball,” interrupted his wife. “I was telling her about that when you came in. But you ought to get some exercise, Hermann. Will you not drive down again after lunch, and see if you cannot find someone? Or why do you not ring up somebody in town, and take him down? Perhaps Lord Grote would have a game with you. What a pity you did not bring him to lunch, Helen.”
“Oh, there’s no golf for poor Grote,” said she. “He is at the Censor’s office every day till seven.”
“That is horrible work for a gentleman to do,” said Aline violently. “It is opening private letters, is it not, and interning the writers, or shooting them as spies? There was a spy shot yesterday, I am told. It made me feel quite sick to think of it, and it may have been your husband, Helen, who opened a letter from him. I should feel like a murderer, if I had done that. I daresay his letters were quite innocent, really, but they read into them all sorts of things he hadn’t meant. Don’t let us talk about it: it is too horrible, and in a country that calls itself Christian. I think——”
Her husband interrupted her.
“Do not think at all, Aline,” he said, “if you can only think such nonsense. Do you wish spies to be allowed to write any information they choose to an enemy’s country? You are childish.”
“And you are very unkind,” said she. “Helen, I know, agrees with me. Is it not horrible to kill men in cold blood? I should never have a moment’s peace again, if I had opened a man’s private letter, and he got shot for what it contained. I am sure they don’t do such horrible things in Germany. It is barbarous. But don’t let us talk about it: I have asked you before, Hermann, not to talk about it. I want no more lunch now that we have introduced such terrible topics, and I was so hungry.”
Helen felt that she was listening to the ravings of an unsound mind. It was clear that poor Aline was in a whirlwind of nervous tumult, and it required no great ingenuity to conjecture its origin. She had determined to profess the most English of attitudes, but at heart all her instincts were German, and they spouted and spirted like water through holes in a closed weir which had been shut against the force of the stream. She had suspected this down at Ashmore, though there Aline was able to keep a firmer hand on herself. Now, it was evident, her self-control was in rags, and she pitifully tried still to drape it round herself. She made such an effort now, as they rose, leaving Sir Hermann to finish his lunch by himself.