“I never realised how very German your maid is,” he observed suddenly. “It made me feel quite uncomfortable while we were talking at dinner! Do you intend to keep her?”
“Yes, of course I do.” Mrs. Otway felt hurt and angry. “I shouldn’t dream of sending her away! Anna has lived in England over twenty years, and her only child is married to an Englishman.” She waited a moment, and as he said nothing, she went on: “My good old Anna is devoted to England, though of course she loves her Fatherland too.”
“I should have thought the two loves quite incompatible at the present time,” he objected drily.
Mrs. Otway flushed in the half darkness. “I find them quite compatible, James,” she exclaimed. “Of course I’m sorry that the military party should triumph in Germany—that, we all must feel, and probably many Germans do too. But, after all, you may hate the sin and love the sinner!”
“Will you feel the same when Germans have killed Englishmen?” he asked idly. He was watching the door through which Rose had vanished a few moments ago, longing with a restrained, controlled longing for her return.
As a matter of fact he himself had never had any feeling of dislike of the Germans; on the contrary, he had struck up an acquaintance which had almost become friendship with one of the younger members of the German Embassy. And suddenly Mrs. Otway remembered it.
“Why, you yourself,” she cried, “you yourself, James, have a German friend—I mean that young Von Lissing. I liked him so much that week-end you brought him down. What’s happened to him? I suppose he’s gone?”
“Gone?” He turned and looked at her in the twilight. Really, Aunt Mary was sometimes very silly. “Of course, he’s gone! As a matter of fact he left London ten days before his chief.” And then he added reflectively, perhaps with more a wish to tease her than anything else, “I’ve rather wondered this last week whether Von Lissing’s friendship with me was regarded by him as a business matter. He sometimes asked me such odd questions. Of course one has always known that Germans are singularly inquisitive—that they are always wanting to find out things. I confess it never struck me at the time that his questions meant anything more than that sort of insatiable wish to know that all Germans have.”
“What sort of things did he ask you, James?” asked Mrs. Otway curiously.