Apart from being the daughter of the well-to-do Mrs.
Warren, she was English, and seemed to impose respect even on the
Germans. They took over her valuables, made out a receipt, and
cashed a fairly large cheque in ready money. Vivie then ventured to
ask the bank clerk who had seen to her business if he had any news.
Looking cautiously round, he said the rumours going through the town
were that the Queen of Holland, enraged that her Prince Consort
should have facilitated the crossing of Limburg by German armies,
had shot him dead with a revolver; that the Crown Prince of Germany,
despairing of a successful end of the War, had committed suicide at
his father's feet; that the American Consul General in Brussels--to
whom, by the bye, Vivie ought to report herself and her mother, in
order to come under his protection--had notified General Sixt von
Arnim, commanding the army in Brussels, that, _unless he vacated the
Belgian capital immediately_, England would bombard Hamburg and the
United States would declare war on the Kaiser. Alluring stories like
these flitted through despairing Brussels during the first two
months of German occupation, though Vivie, in her solitude at
Tervueren, seldom heard them.
After her business at the bank she walked about the town. No one
took any notice of her or annoyed her in any way. The restaurants
seemed crowded with Belgians as well as Germans, and the Belgians
did not seem to have lost their appetites.
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