frankly, Pen, I never heard of anything of the sort being done
from Washington."

"Perhaps not," she answered composedly. "You see, things have
developed with us during the last twenty-five years. The old
America had only one foreign policy, and that was to hold
inviolate the Monroe doctrine. European or Asiatic complications
scarcely even interested her. Those times have passed, Dicky.
Cuba and the Philippines were the start of other things. We are
being drawn into the maelstrom. In another ten years we shall be
there, whether we want to be or not."

The young man was deeply interested.

"Well," he admitted, "there's a good deal in what you say,
Penelope. You talk about it all as though you were a diplomat
yourself."

"Perhaps I am," she answered calmly. "A stray young woman like
myself must have something to occupy her thoughts, you know."

He laughed.

"That's not bad," he asserted, "for a girl whom the New York
Herald declared, a few weeks ago, to be one of the most brilliant
young women in English society."

She shrugged her shoulders scornfully.

"That's just the sort of thing the New York Herald would say,"