“I have been in England twice during the last few months,” Naida said.  “You know very well at whose wish I came, I have been studying the conditions here, studying the people so far as I can.  I find them such a kindly race.  I find their present Government so unsuspicious, so genuinely altruistic.  After all, that Treaty belongs to an England that has passed.  The England of to-day would never go to war at all.  They believe here that they have solved the problem of perpetual peace.”

Immelan smiled a little bitterly.

“Dear lady,” he said, “if I lose your help, if you go back to Petrograd and talk to Paul Matinsky as you are talking to me, do you know that you will break the heart of a nation?”

She shook her head.

“Paul does not look upon me as infallible,” she protested.  “Besides, there are other considerations.  And now, please, we will talk of the tennis.  I do not know whether it is my fancy, but that man there to your left, in grey, seems to me to be taking an interest in our conversation.  He cannot possibly overhear, and he has not glanced once in our direction, yet I have an instinct for these things.”

Immelan glanced in the direction of the stranger,—­a quiet-looking, spare man dressed in a grey tweed suit, clean-shaven and of early middle-age.  There was nothing about his appearance to distinguish him from a score or more of other loiterers.

“You are quite right,” her companion admitted.  “One should not talk of these things even where the birds may listen, but it is so difficult.  As for that man, he could not possibly hear, but there might be others.  One passes behind on the grass so noiselessly.”

They relapsed into silence.  Naida, leaning a little forward, became once more engrossed in the play.  Her eyes were fixed upon Nigel.  It was his movements which she followed, his strokes which she usually applauded.  Immelan sat by her side and watched.

“They are well matched,” he remarked presently.

“Mr. Chalmers has a wonderful service,” she declared, “but Lord Dorminster has more skill.  Oh, bravo!”

The set at that moment was finished by a backhanded return from Nigel, which skimmed over the net at a great pace, completely out of reach of the opposing couple.  The players strolled across to the seats under the trees.  Naida smiled at Nigel, and he came over to her side.  Once again he was conscious of that peculiar sense of pleasure and well-being which he felt in her company.

“You play tennis very well, Lord Dorminster,” she said.

“I found inspiration,” he answered.

“In your partner?”

“Maggie is always charming to play with.  I was thinking of the onlookers.”

“Mr. Immelan is very interested in tennis,” she remarked, with a smile which challenged him.

“And you?”

“Even more so.”

“Tell me about games in Russia,” he begged, seating himself on the grass by her side.