"Quite calm again," he replied. "The trouble seems to have passed over. Falkenberg's death upset the whole scheme which was brewing against us, whatever it may have been. All the notes which are being interchanged at the present moment are perfectly pacific."
The Duchess sighed.
"After all," she said, "my little visit to Paris was not so wild. I don't think you would ever have found out about Anne but for me."
Julien smiled.
"If I really believed that," he assured her, "and I shall try to, then
I should feel that I owed you more than any person upon the earth."
The dinner was a success. Lady Anne seemed certainly to have developed. She was looking wonderfully handsome, and though her eyes strayed more than once to the end of the table where her husband was sitting, she carried on her share of the conversation with just that trifle of assurance which marks the transition from girlhood to the dignity of marriage. After the women had left, conversation for a few moments was necessarily political. The Duke, who read the Times and the Spectator, and attended every debate in the House of Lords, spoke with some authority.
"I believe," he said firmly, "that we have passed through a crisis greater than any one, even those in power, know of. It is my opinion that Falkenberg was the bitter enemy of this country—that it was he, indeed, who kept alive all that suspicious and jealous feeling of which we have had constant evidences from Berlin. He was dying all the time to make mischief. I am sorry, of course, for his tragical end. On the other hand, I am inclined to believe that his departure from the sphere of politics was the best thing that has happened to this country for many years."
"There is no doubt," Lord Cardington declared, "that he was working hard to estrange France and England. Your letters, Sir Julien, made that remarkably evident."
"'The good that men do lives after them,'" some one quoted, "also the evil. I am afraid it will be some time before France and England are on exactly the same terms."
"I would not be so sure," Julien interposed, setting down his glass. "The politics of Paris are the politics of France, and the spirit of the Parisian is essentially mercurial. Besides, the days of the great alliance draw nearer—the next step forward after the arbitration treaty. Who can doubt that when that is completed, France will embrace the chance of permanent peace?"