Page:The Prime Minister by Hall Caine.djvu/17

Rh to the Archduke if he became Emperor of Austria (as it seemed he might at any moment) and carried out with the Kaiser the schemes with which he was credited by whispered rumour and report? They were apparently united and harmonious now, laughing and chatting and calling each other by their Christian names and diminutives, but it needed no special development of the dramatic sense to hear under the crackle of cup and saucer the murmur of the voiceless millions of Europe, whose lives lay so lightly in the hands of this little party taking tea together in the snow-covered house among the mountains. Next morning I awoke early with the drama of that tea-party strongly on my mind, but, by a process which imaginative writers will recognize as not unfamiliar, the scenes and characters had undergone important changes during the hours of sleep. The Archduke had become the Prime Minister of England; his palace at Konopisht had become No. 10 Downing Street; the daughter of King Leopold had become the daughter of a German doctor practising in Soho, and the long-expected war had begun. My imaginary German girl, inspired by racial hatred, and smarting under a deep sense of personal injury, had found a way, under a false name and character, of entering the house of the Prime Minister in order to destroy him, and through him, his country. But being in that house, she could not get out of it. Fate had laid its hand upon her. She had fallen into her own trap. Her hate of hates had gone down before the stirrings of another (and apparently unrequitable) passion. And after her soul had become denationalized, and she had rightly convinced herself that, like some of the highest ladies of the land, she was a true and loyal