“Within the next few days,” Dominey replied.

“I shall breathe more freely when you are securely established there,” his companion declared.  “Great things wait upon your complete acceptance, in the country as well as in town, as Sir Everard Dominey.  You are sure that you perfectly understand your position there as regards your—­er—­domestic affairs?”

“I understand all that is necessary,” was the somewhat stiff reply.

“All that is necessary is not enough,” Seaman rejoined irritably.  “I thought that you had wormed the whole story out of that drunken Englishman?”

“He told me most of it.  There were just one or two points which lay beyond the limits where questioning was possible.”

Seaman frowned angrily.

“In other words,” he complained, “you remembered that you were a gentleman and not that you were a German.”

“The Englishman of a certain order,” Dominey pronounced, “even though he be degenerate, has a certain obstinacy, generally connected with one particular thing, which nothing can break.  We talked together on that last night until morning; we drank wine and brandy.  I tore the story of my own exile from my breast and laid it bare before him.  Yet I knew all the time, as I know now, that he kept something back.”

There was a brief pause.  During the last few minutes a certain tension had crept in between the two men.  With it, their personal characteristics seemed to have become intensified.  Dominey was more than ever the aristocrat; Seaman the plebian schemer, unabashed and desperately in earnest.  He leaned presently a little way across the table.  His eyes had narrowed but they were as bright as steel.  His teeth were more prominent than usual.

“You should have dragged it from his throat,” he insisted.  “It is not your duty to nurse fine personal feelings.  Heart and soul you stand pledged to great things.  I cannot at this moment give you any idea what you may not mean to us after the trouble has come, if you are able to play your part still in this country as Everard Dominey of Dominey Hall.  I know well enough that the sense of personal honour amongst the Prussian aristocracy is the finest in the world, and yet there is not a single man of your order who should not be prepared to lie or cheat for his country’s sake.  You must fall into line with your fellows.  Once more, it is not only your task with regard to Terniloff which makes your recognition as Everard Dominey so important to us.  It is the things which are to come later.—­Come, enough of this subject.  I know that you understand.  We grow too serious.  How shall you spend your evening until eleven o’clock?  Remember you did not leave England an anchorite, Sir Everard.  You must have your amusements.  Why not try a music hall?”

“My mind is too full of other things,” Dominey objected.

“Then come with me to Holborn,” the little man suggested.  “It will amuse you.  We will part at the door, and you shall sit at the back of the hall, out of sight.  You shall hear the haunting eloquence of your cousin-in-law.  You shall hear him trying to warn the men and women of England of the danger awaiting them from the great and rapacious German nation.  What do you say?”