Part 25 (2/2)

”But was all your answer there?” he said quickly. ”Were there no other reasons? Natalie! don't you know that, if you regretted your decision ever so little--if you thought twice about it--if even now you can give me leave to hope that one day you will be my wife--there were no reasons at all in your letter for your refusing--none at all? If you love me even so little that you regret--”

”I must not listen to you,” she said hurriedly. ”No, no. My answer was best for us both. I am sorry if it pains you; but you have other things to think of; we have our separate duties in the world--duties that are of first importance. My dear friend,” she continued, with an air of appeal, ”don't you see how I am situated? I have no one to advise me--not even my father, though I can guess what he would say. I know what he would say; and my heart tells me that I have done right.”

”One word,” said he. ”This you must answer me frankly. Is there no other reason for your refusal? Is your heart free to choose?”

She looked up and met his eyes for a moment: only for a moment.

”I understand you,” she said, with some slight color mounting to the pale clear olive of her brow. ”No, there is not any reason like that.”

A quick, proud light leaped into his eyes.

”Then,” said he, ”I refuse to accept your refusal. Natalie, you will be my wife!”

”Oh, do not say that--do not think of it. I have done wrong even to listen, to let you speak--”

”But what I say is true. I claim you, as surely as I now hold your hand--”

”Hus.h.!.+”

There were two people coming into the room; he did not care if there were a regiment. He relinquished her hand, it is true; but there was a proud and grateful look on his face; he did not even turn to regard the new-comers.

These were Madame Potecki and Calabressa. The little Polish lady had misconstrued Natalie's parting words to mean that some visitors had arrived, and that she and Calabressa were to follow when they pleased.

Now that they had appeared in the drawing-room, they could not fail to perceive how matters stood, and, in fact, the little gentlewoman was on the point of retiring. But Natalie was quite mistress of the situation.

She reminded Madame Potecki that she had met Mr. Brand before. She introduced Calabressa to the stranger, saying that he was a friend of her father's.

”It is opportune--it is a felicitous circ.u.mstance,” said Calabressa, in his nasal French. ”Mademoiselle, behold the truth. If I do not have a cigarette after my food, I die--veritably I die! Now your friend, the friend of the house, surely he will take compa.s.sion on me; and we will have a cigarette together in some apartment.”

Here he touched Brand's elbow, having sidled up to him. On any other occasion Brand would have resented the touch, the invitation, the mere presence of this theatrical-looking albino. But he was not in a captious mood. How could he refuse when he heard Natalie say, in her soft, low voice,

”Will you be so kind, Mr. Brand? Anneli will light up papa's little smoking-room.”

Directly afterward he found himself in the small study, alone with this odd-looking person, whom he easily recognized as the stranger who had been walking in the Park with Natalie in the morning. Closer inspection rendered him less afraid of this rival.

Calabressa rolled a cigarette between his fingers, and lit it.

”I ask your pardon, monsieur. I ask your pardon beforehand. I am about to be impertinent; it is necessary. If you will tell me some things, I will tell you some things which it may be better for you to know. First, then, I a.s.sume that you wish to marry that dear child, that beautiful young lady up-stairs.”

”My good friend, you are a little bit too outrageous,” said Brand.

”Ah! Then I must begin. You know, perhaps, that the mother of this young lady is alive?”

”Alive!”

”I perceive you do not know,” said Calabressa, coolly. ”I thought you would know--I thought you would guess. A child might guess. She told me you had seen the locket--_Natalie to Natalushka_--was not that enough?”

”If Miss Lind herself did not guess that her mother was alive, how should I?”

”If you have been brought up for sixteen or eighteen years to mourn one as dead, you do not quickly imagine that he or she is not dead: you perceive?”

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