In the afternoon Mr. von Inwald came out to the spring-house and sat around, very affable and friendly, drinking the water.  He and the bishop grew quite chummy.  Miss Patty was not there, but about four o’clock Mr. Pierce came out.  He did not sit down, but wandered around the room, not talking to anybody, but staring, whenever he could, at the prince.  Once I caught Mr. von Inwald’s eyes fixed on him, as if he might have seen him before.  After a while Mr. Pierce sat down in a corner like a sulky child and filled his pipe, and as nobody noticed him except to complain about the pipe, which he didn’t even hear, he sat there for a half-hour, bent forward, with his pipe clenched in his teeth, and never took his eyes off Mr. von Inwald’s face.

Senator Biggs was the one who really caused the trouble.  He spent a good deal of time in the spring-house trying to fool his stomach by keeping it filled up all the time with water.  He had got past the cranky stage, being too weak for it; his face was folded up in wrinkles like an accordion and his double chin was so flabby you could have tucked it away inside his collar.

“What do you think of American women, Mr. von Inwald?” he asked, and everybody stopped playing cards and listened for the answer.  As Mr. von Inwald represented the prince, wouldn’t he be likely to voice the prince’s opinion of American women?

It’s my belief Mr. von Inwald was going to say something nice.  He smiled as if he meant to, but just then he saw Mr. Pierce in his corner sneering behind his pipe.  They looked at each other steadily, and nobody could mistake the hate in Mr. Pierce’s face or his sneer.  After a minute the prince looked away and shrugged his shoulders, but he didn’t make his pretty speech.

“American women!” he said, turning his glass of spring water around on the table before him, “they are very lovely, of course.”  He looked around and there were Mrs. Moody and Mrs. Biggs and Miss Cobb, and he even glanced at me in the spring.  Then he looked again at Mr. Pierce and kept his eyes there.  “But they are spoiled, fearfully spoiled.  They rule their parents and they expect to rule their husbands.  In Europe we do things better; we are not—­what is the English?—­hag-ridden?”

There was a sort of murmur among the men, but the women all nodded as if they thought Europe was entirely right.  They’d have agreed with him if he’d advocated sixteen wives sitting cross-legged on a mat, like the Turks.  Mr. Pierce was still staring at the prince.

“What I don’t quite understand, Mr. von Inwald,” the bishop put in in his nice way, “is your custom of expecting a girl to bring her husband a certain definite sum of money and to place it under the husband’s control.  Our wealthy American girls control their own money,” He was thinking of Miss Patty, and everybody knew it.

The prince turned red and glared at the bishop.  Then I think he remembered that they didn’t know who he was, and he smiled and started to turning the glass again.