"Half-a-dozen of them, perhaps," he answered gloomily, no more.

"To-day," she declared, "I seem to have lost confidence. I seem to
feel the sense of impending calamity, to hear the guns as I walk,
to see the terror fall upon the faces of all these great crowds who
throng your streets. They are a stolid, unbelieving people - these.
The blow, when it comes, will be the harder."

Bellamy sighed.

"You are right," he said. "When one comes to think of it, it is
amazing. How long the prophets of woe have preached, and how
completely their teachings have been ignored! The invasion bogey
has been so long among us that it has become nothing but a jest.
Even I, in a way, am one of the unbelievers."

"You are not serious, David!" she exclaimed.

"I am," he affirmed. "I think that if we could read that document
we should see that there is no plan there for the immediate invasion
of England. I think you would find that the blow would be struck
simultaneously at our Colonies. We should either have to submit or
send a considerable fleet away from home waters. Then, I presume,
the question of invasion would come again. All the time, of course,
the gage would be flung down, treaties would be defied, we should be
scorned as though we were a nation of weaklings. Austria would
gather in what she wanted, and there would be no one to interfere."

Louise was very pale but her eyes were flashing fire.