CHAPTER XIII. EAST AND WEST
After the supper there were obligations which the Prince, whose sense of etiquette was always strong, could not avoid. He took Penelope back to her aunt, reminding her that the next dance but one belonged to him. Miss Morse, who was an invalid and was making one of her very rare appearances in Society, watched him curiously as he disappeared.
“I wonder what they’d think of your new admirer in New York, Penelope,” she remarked.
“I imagine,” Penelope answered, “that they would envy me very much.”
Miss Morse, who was a New Englander of the old-fashioned type, opened her lips, but something in her niece’s face restrained her.
“Well, at any rate,” she said, “I hope we don’t go to war with them. The Admiral wrote me, a few weeks ago, that he saw no hope for anything else.”
“It would be a terrible complication,” the Duchess sighed, “especially considering our own alliance with Japan. I don’t think we need consider it seriously, however. Over in America you people have too much common sense.”
“The Government have, very likely,” Miss Morse admitted, “but it isn’t always the Government who decide things or who even rule the country. We have an omnipotent Press, you know. All that’s wanted is a weak President, and Heaven knows where we should be!”
“Of course,” the Duchess remarked, “Prince Maiyo is half an Englishman. His mother was a Stretton-Wynne. One of the first intermarriages, I should think. Lord Stretton-Wynne was Ambassador to Japan.”
“I think,” said Penelope, “that if you could look into Prince Maiyo’s heart you would not find him half an Englishman. I think that he is more than seven-eighths a Japanese.”