"But do you really think they are ready?" she said doubtfully. "Look how badly they've been doing at Liége." It was strange how Mrs. Otway's mind had veered round in the last few minutes. She now wanted the Germans to be beaten, and beaten quickly.
He shook his head impatiently. "Wait till they get into their stride!" And then, in a different, a more diffident voice, "Then you'll consent to relieve my mind by keeping the contents of that envelope--I mean of course by spending them? As a matter of fact I've a confession to make to you." He looked at her deprecatingly. "I've just arranged with my London banker to make up those Hamburg dividends. He'll send you the money in notes. He understands----" and then he got rather red. "He understands that I'm practically your trustee, Mrs. Otway."
"But, Major Guthrie--it isn't _true_! How could you say such a thing?"
She felt confused, unhappy, surprised, awkward, grateful. Of course she couldn't take this man's money! He was a friend, in some ways a very close friend of hers, but she hadn't known him more than four years. If she _should_ run short of money, why there must be a dozen people or more on whose friendship she had a greater claim, and who could, and would, help her.
And then Mary Otway suddenly ran over in secret review her large circle of old friends and acquaintances, and she realised, with a shock of pain and astonishment, that there was not one of them to whom she would wish to go for help in that kind of trouble. Of her wide circle--and like most people of her class she had a very wide circle--there was only one person, and that was the man who was now sitting looking at her with so much concern in his eyes, to whom it would even have occurred to her to confess that her income had failed through her foolish belief in the stability, and the peaceful intentions, of Germany.
Far, far quicker than it would have taken for her to utter her thoughts aloud, these painful thoughts and realisations flashed through her brain. If she had been content to put into this Hamburg Loan only the amount of the legacy she had inherited three years ago! But she had done more than that--she had sold out sound English railway stock after that interview she had had with a pleasant-speaking German business man in the big London Hamburg Loan office. He had said to her, "Madam, this is the opportunity of a lifetime!" And she had believed him. The kind German friend who had written to her about the matter had certainly acted in good faith. Of that she could rest assured. But this was very small consolation now.