At tea, which they both took with lemon, Soames spoke of the Transvaal.

“There’ll be war,” he said.

Madame Lamotte lamented.

“ Ces pauvres gens bergers! ” Could they not be left to themselves?

Soames smiled⁠—the question seemed to him absurd.

Surely as a woman of business she understood that the British could not abandon their legitimate commercial interests.

“Ah! that!” But Madame Lamotte found that the English were a little hypocrite. They were talking of justice and the Uitlanders, not of business. Monsieur was the first who had spoken to her of that.