“I should infer from the little that passed between Maud and myself,” he said, “that you are ignorant of the two most important events that have yet occurred in this unhappy conflict?”

“We learn little here,” answered the father.  “I have heard that my Lord Howe and his brother Sir William have been named commissioners by His Majesty to heal all the differences.  I knew them both, when young men, and their elder brother before them.  Black Dick, as we used to call the admiral, is a discreet, well-meaning man; though I fear both of them owe their appointments more to their affinity to the sovereign than to the qualities that might best fit them to deal with the Americans.”

“Little is known of the affinity of which you speak[*], and less said in the army,” returned the major, “but I fear there is no hope of the object of the commission’s being effected.  The American congress has declared the colonies altogether independent of England; and so far as this country is concerned, the war is carried on as between nation and nation.  All allegiance, even in name, is openly cast aside.”

[* The mother of the three Lords Howe, so well known in American history, viz:  George, killed before Ticonderoga, in the war of ’56; Richard, the celebrated admiral, and the hero of the 1st June; and Sir William, for several years commander-in-chief in this country, and the 5th and last viscount; was a Mademoiselle Kilmansegge, who was supposed to be a natural daughter of George I. This would make these three officers and George II. first-cousins; and George III their great-nephew a la mode de Bretagne.  Walpole, and various other English writers, speak openly, not only of the connection, but of the family resemblance.  Indeed, most of the gossiping writers of that age seem to allow that Lord Howe was a grandson of the first English sovereign of the House of Brunswick.]

“You astonish me, Bob!  I did not think it could ever come to this!”

“I thought your native attachments would hardly endure as strong a measure as this has got to be,” answered the major, not a little satisfied with the strength of feeling manifested by his father.  “Yet has this been done, sir, and done in a way that it will not be easy to recall.  Those who now resist us, resist for the sake of throwing off all connection with England.”

“Has France any agency in this, Bob?—­I own it startles me, and has a French look.”

“It has driven many of the most respectable of our enemies into our arms, sir.  We have never considered you a direct enemy, though unhappily inclining too much against us; ’but this will determine Sir Hugh,’ said the commander-in-chief in our closing interview—­I suppose you know, my dear father, that all your old friends, knowing what has happened, insist on calling you Sir Hugh.  I assure you, I never open my lips on the subject; and yet Lord Howe drank to the health of Sir Hugh Willoughby, openly at his own table, the last time I had the honour to dine with him.”