“Can’t you impress on your mother that she mustn’t?”

Michael leaned forward to the fire, pondering this, and stretching out his big hands to the blaze.

“Yes, I might,” he said.  “I should love to see Sylvia again, just see her, you know.  We settled that the old terms we were on couldn’t continue.  At least, I settled that, and she understood.”

“Sylvia is a gaby,” remarked Aunt Barbara.

“I’m rather glad you think so.”

“Oh, get her to come,” said she.  “I’m sure your mother will do as you tell her.  I’ll be here too, if you like, if that will do any good.  By the way, I see your Hermann’s piano recital comes off to-morrow.”

“I know.  My mother wants to go to that, and I think I shall take her.  Will you come too, Aunt Barbara, and sit on the other side of her?  My ‘Variations’ are going to be played.  If they are a success, Hermann tells me I shall be dragged screaming on to the platform, and have to bow.  Lord!  And if they’re not, well, ‘Lord’ also.”

“Yes, my dear, of course I’ll come.  Let me see, I shall have to lie, as I have another engagement, but a little thing like that doesn’t bother me.”

Suddenly she clapped her hands together.

“My dear, I quite forgot,” she said.  “Michael, such excitement.  You remember the boat you heard taking soundings on the deep-water reach?  Of course you do!  Well, I sent that information to the proper quarter, and since then watch has been kept in the woods just above it.  Last night only the coastguard police caught four men at it—­all Germans.  They tried to escape as they did before, by rowing down the river, but there was a steam launch below which intercepted them.  They had on them a chart of the reach, with soundings, nearly complete; and when they searched their houses—­they are all tenants of your astute father, who merely laughed at us—­they found a very decent map of certain private areas at Harwich.  Oh, I’m not such a fool as I look.  They thanked me, my dear, for my information, and I very gracefully said that my information was chiefly got by you.”

“But did those men live in Ashbridge?” asked Michael.

“Yes; and your father will have four decorous houses on his hands.  I am glad:  he should not have laughed at us.  It will teach him, I hope.  And now, my dear, I must go.”

She stood up, and put her hand on Michael’s arm.

“And you know what I think of you,” she said.  “To-morrow evening, then.  I hate music usually; but then I adore Mr. Hermann.  I only wish he wasn’t a German.  Can’t you get him to naturalise himself and his sister?”

“You wouldn’t ask that if you had seen him in Munich,” said Michael.

“I suppose not.  Patriotism is such a degrading emotion when it is not English.”

Michael’s “Variations” came some half-way down the programme next evening, and as the moment for them approached, Lady Ashbridge got more and more excited.