Hermann took a cigarette, frowning.

"It may be a match--" he began.

Mrs. Falbe diverted her attention from "Lady Ursula" for a moment.

"They are on the chimney-piece, dear," she said, thinking he spoke of material matches.

Michael felt that Hermann saw something, or conjectured something ominous in this news, for he sat with knitted brow reading, and letting the match burn down.

"Yes; it seems that Servian officers are implicated," he said. "And there are materials enough already for a row between Austria and Servia without this."

"Those tiresome Balkan States," said Mrs. Falbe, slowly immersing herself like a diving submarine in her book. "They are always quarrelling. Why doesn't Austria conquer them all and have done with it?"

This simple and striking solution of the whole Balkan question was her final contribution to the topic, for at this moment she became completely submerged, and cut off, so to speak, from the outer world, in the lucent depths of Lady Ursula.

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