“But don’t you know why?” said Lady Victoria.

Mrs. Rossiter didn’t.

“Because in Manchester Square, in Cavendish—­Grosvenor—­Hanover Squares, in Portland Place—­a few doors off your own house—­in Harley Street and Wigmore Street:  there are special friends of the Kaiser living.  They may call themselves by English names, they may even be ex-cabinet-ministers; but they are working for the Kaiser, all the same.  And he wouldn’t be such a fool as to have them bombed, would he?”

“Especially as it is well known that there is a wireless installation on a house in Portland Place which communicates with a similar installation in the Harz Mountains,” added Lady Helen.

This was a half-reassuring, half-terrifying statement.  It was comfortable to know that you lived under the Kaiser’s wing—­Mrs. Rossiter hoped the aim of the aeronauts was accurate, and their knowledge of London topography good.  At the same time it was alarming to feel that you might be involved in that final blow up of the villains which must bring such scoundreldom to a close.  But if Lady Vera and Lady Helen knew all this for a fact, why not tell the Police?  “What would be the good?  They’d deny everything and we should only be sued for libel.”

However to form some conception of how English home life was undermined with plots, she was advised to go and see Mr. Dennis Eadie in The Man That Stayed at Home.  She did, taking Mrs. Adams with her to the Dress Circle for a matinee.  Both were very much impressed, and on their return expected the fireplaces to open all of a piece and reveal German spies with masked faces and pistols, standing in the chimney.

At last these and other nightmares were dispelled by the arrival of Rossiter on leave of absence in the autumn of 1916.  He had the rank of Colonel in the R.A.M.C., and wore the khaki uniform—­Mrs. Rossiter proudly thought—­of a General.  He had shaved off his beard and trimmed his moustache and looked particularly soldierly.  The butler who came with him though not precisely a soldier but a sort of N.C.O. in a medical corps, also looked quite martial, and had so much to say for himself that Mrs. Rossiter felt he could never become a butler again.  But he did all the same, and a most efficient one though a little breezy in manner.

Linda now entered on an aftermath of matrimonial happiness.  Rossiter was to take quite a long leave so that he could pursue the most important researches in curative surgery—­bone grafting and the like; not only in his own laboratory but at the College of Surgeons and the Zoological Gardens Prosectorium.  With only occasional week-ends at home he had been away from London since September, 1914; had known great hardships, the life of the trenches and the bomb-proof shelter, stewed tea and bad tinned milk, rum and water, bully beef, plum and apple jam, good bread, it is true, but shocking margarine for butter.  He had slept