“I know that an American man-o’-war hasn’t any right to fire upon British possessions, but you just keep quiet and let well enough alone.  These fellows believe that the Americans can shoot straighter and with less pity than any other set of people on earth.  If they ever find out the truth, we won’t be able to control ’em a minute.  It won’t hurt you to let ’em believe that we can blow the Island off the map in half a day, and they won’t believe you if you tell ’em anything to the contrary.  They just simply know that I can send wireless messages and that a cruiser would be out there to-morrow if necessary, pegging away at these green hills with cannon balls so big that there wouldn’t be anything left but the horizon in an hour or two.  You let me do the talking.  I’ve got ’em bluffed and I’ll keep ’em that way.  Look at that!  See those fellows getting ready to wash the front windows?  They don’t need it, I’ll confess, but it makes conversation in the servants’ hall.”

Over in the gorgeous west wing, Lord Deppingham later on tried to convince his sulky little wife that the Americans were an amazing lot, after all.  Bromley tapped at the door.

“Tea is served in the hanging garden, my lady,” she announced.  Her mistress looked up in surprise, red-eyed and a bit dishevelled.

“The—­the what?”

“It’s a very pretty place just outside the rooms of the American lady and gentleman, my lady.  It’s on the shady side and quite under the shelf of the mountain.  There’s a very cool breeze all the time, they say, from the caverns.”

Deppingham glanced at the sun-baked window ledges of their own rooms and swore softly.

“Ask some one to bring the tea things in here, Bromley,” she said sternly, her piquant face as hard and set as it could possibly be—­which, as a matter of fact, was not noticeably adamantine.  “Besides, I want to give some orders.  We must have system here, not Americanisms.”

“Very well, my lady.”

After she had retired Deppingham was so unwise as to run his finger around the inside of his collar and utter the lamentation: 

“By Jove, Aggie, it is hot in these rooms.”  She transfixed him with a stare.

“I find it delightfully cool, George.”  She called him George only when it was impossible to call him just what she wanted to.

The tea things did not come in; in their stead came pretty Mrs. Browne.  She stood in the doorway, a pleading sincere smile on her face.

“Won’t you please join Mr. Browne and me in that dear little garden?  It’s so cool up there and it must be dreadfully warm here.  Really, you should move at once into Mr. Wyckholme’s old apartments across the court from ours.  They are splendid.  But, now do come and have tea with us.”

Whether it was the English love of tea or the American girl’s method of making it, I do not know, but I am able to record the fact that Lord and Lady Deppingham hesitated ever so briefly and—­fell.