“The falcon cage is empty,” said Lady Greymarten, pointing to a large wired dome that towered high above the other enclosures, “I let the lanner fly free one day.  The other birds may be reconciled to their comfortable quarters and abundant food and absence of dangers, but I don’t think all those things could make up to a falcon for the wild range of cliff and desert.  When one has lost one’s own liberty one feels a quicker sympathy for other caged things, I suppose.”

There was silence for a moment, and then the Dowager went on, in a wistful, passionate voice: 

“I am an old woman now, Murrey, I must die in my cage.  I haven’t the strength to fight.  Age is a very real and very cruel thing, though we may shut our eyes to it and pretend it is not there.  I thought at one time that I should never really know what it meant, what it brought to one.  I thought of it as a messenger that one could keep waiting out in the yard till the very last moment.  I know now what it means. . . .  But you, Murrey, you are young, you can fight.  Are you going to be a fighter, or the very humble servant of the fait accompli?”

“I shall never be the servant of the fait accompli,” said Yeovil.  “I loathe it.  As to fighting, one must first find out what weapon to use, and how to use it effectively.  One must watch and wait.”

“One must not wait too long,” said the old woman.  “Time is on their side, not ours.  It is the young people we must fight for now, if they are ever to fight for us.  A new generation will spring up, a weaker memory of old glories will survive, the eclat of the ruling race will capture young imaginations.  If I had your youth, Murrey, and your sex, I would become a commercial traveller.”

“A commercial traveller!” exclaimed Yeovil.

“Yes, one whose business took him up and down the country, into contact with all classes, into homes and shops and inns and railway carriages.  And as I travelled I would work, work on the minds of every boy and girl I came across, every young father and young mother too, every young couple that were going to be man and wife.  I would awaken or keep alive in their memory the things that we have been, the grand, brave things that some of our race have done, and I would stir up a longing, a determination for the future that we must win back.  I would be a counter-agent to the agents of the fait accompli.  In course of time the Government would find out what I was doing, and I should be sent out of the country, but I should have accomplished something, and others would carry on the work.  That is what I would do.  Murrey, even if it is to be a losing battle, fight it, fight it!”

Yeovil knew that the old lady was fighting her last battle, rallying the discouraged, and spurring on the backward.

A footman came to announce that the carriage waited to take him back to the station.  His hostess walked with him through the hall, and came out on to the stone-flagged terrace, the terrace from which a former Lady Greymarten had watched the twinkling bonfires that told of Waterloo.