She got up and stood with Michael near the fireplace.

“And they think their opportunity is at hand,” she said, “though not for a moment do they relax their preparations.  We are their real enemy, don’t you see?  They can fight France with one hand and Russia with the other; and in a few months’ time now they expect we shall be in the throes of an internal revolution over this Irish business.  They may be right, but there is just the possibility that they may be astoundingly wrong.  The fact of the great foreign peril—­this nightmare, this Armageddon of European war—­may be exactly that which will pull us together.  But their diplomatists, anyhow, are studying the Irish question very closely, and German gold, without any doubt at all, is helping the Home Rule party.  As a nation we are fast asleep.  I wonder what we shall be like when we wake.  Shall we find ourselves already fettered when we wake, or will there be one moment, just one moment, in which we can spring up?  At any rate, hitherto, the English have always been at their best, not their worst, in desperate positions.  They hate exciting themselves, and refuse to do it until the crisis is actually on them.  But then they become disconcertingly serious and cool-headed.”

“And you think the Emperor—­” began Michael.

“I think the Emperor is the hardest worker in all Germany,” said Barbara.  “I believe he is trying (and admirably succeeding) to make us trust his professions of friendship.  He has a great eye for detail, too; it seemed to him worth while to assure you even, my dear Michael, of his regard and affection for England.  He was always impressing on Tony the same thing, though to him, of course, he said that if there was any country nearer to his heart than England it was America.  Stuff and nonsense, my dear!”

All this, though struck in a more serious key than was usual with Aunt Barbara, was quite characteristic of her.  She had the quality of mind which when occupied with one idea is occupied with it to the exclusion of all others; she worked at full power over anything she took up.  But now she dismissed it altogether.

“You see what a diplomatist I have become,” she said.  “It is a fascinating business:  one lives in an atmosphere that is charged with secret affairs, and it infects one like the influenza.  You catch it somehow, and have a feverish cold of your own.  And I am quite useful to him.  You see, I am such a chatterbox that people think I let out things by accident, which I never do.  I let out what I want to let out on purpose, and they think they are pumping me.  I had a long conversation the other day with one of the German Embassy, all about Irish affairs.  They are hugely interested about Irish affairs, and I just make a note of that; but they can make as many notes as they please about what I say, and no one will be any the wiser.  In fact, they will be the foolisher.  And now I suppose I had better take myself away.”