"I can assure you, Mrs. Van Reinberg--" I began.
"Now listen here, Mr. Courage," she interrupted. "I'm not the sort of woman to complain at what I don't try to alter. What's the good of having a husband whose nod is supposed to shake the money markets of the world, if you don't make use of him?"
"You are quite right," I said. "Money, after all, is the greatest power in the world to-day. Money will buy anything!"
"I guess so, if it's properly spent," Mrs. Van Reinberg agreed. "Only very few of my country-people have any idea how to use it to get what they want. They go over the other side and hire great houses, and bribe your great ladies to call themselves their friends, and bribe your young men with wonderful entertainments to come to their houses. They spend, spend, spend, and think they are getting value for their money. Idiots! The great lady whom they are proud to entertain one night is as likely as not to cut them the next. Half the people who go to their parties go out of curiosity, and half to meet their own friends. Not one to see them! Not one because it does them the slightest good to be seen there. They are there in the midst of it all, and that is all you can say. Their motto should be 'on sufferance.' That's what I call going to work the wrong way."
"You have," I suggested, "some other scheme?"
She drew her chair a little closer to mine, and looked around cautiously.
"I have," she admitted. "That is what we are all here for--to discuss it and make our final plans."
"Precisely! He is in it, of course. I may as well tell you that he's dead against my making a confidant of you; but I've a sort of fancy to hear what you might have to say about it. You see I'm a practical woman, and though I've thought this scheme out myself, and I believe in it, there are times when it seems to me a trifle airy. Now you're a kind of level-headed person, and living over there, your point of view would be interesting."
"I should be glad to hear anything you might have to tell me, Mrs. Van Reinberg," I said slowly; "but you must please remember that I am an Englishman."
"Oh! we don't want to hurt your old country," she declared. "I consider that for all the talk about kinship, and all that sort of thing, she treats us--I mean women like myself--disgracefully. But that's neither here nor there. I've finished with England for the present. We're going to play a greater game than that!"