Part 59 (1/2)
”But I have you in my heart, mother: what do I want with a portrait?”
said the girl.
She drew her daughter down to her again, and put her arm once more round her neck.
”I once had hair like yours, Natalushka, but not so beautiful as yours, I think. And you wore the locket, too? Did not that make you guess? Had you no suspicion?”
”How could I--how could I?” she asked. ”Even when I showed it to Calabressa--”
Here she stopped suddenly.
”Did he know, mother?”
”Oh yes.”
”Then why did he not tell me? Oh, it was cruel!” she said, indignantly.
”He told me, Natalie,” George Brand said.
”You knew?” the girl said, turning to him with wide eyes.
”Yes; and Calabressa, when he told me, implored me never to tell you.
Well, perhaps he thought it would give you needless pain. But I was thinking, within the last few days, that I ought to tell you before I left for America.”
”Do you hear, mother?” the girl said, in a low voice. ”He is going away to America--and alone. I wished to go; he refuses.”
”Now I am going away much more contented, Natalie, since you will have a constant companion with you. I presume, madame, you will remain in England?”
The elder woman looked up with rather a frightened air.
”Alas, monsieur, I do not know! When at last I found myself free--when I knew I could come and speak to my child--that was all I thought of.”
”But you wish to remain in England: is it not so?”
”What have I in the world now but this beautiful child--whose heart is not cold, though her mother comes so late to claim her?”
”Then be satisfied, madame. It is simple. No one can interfere with you.
But I will provide you, if you will allow me, with better lodgings than these. I have a few days' idleness still before me.”
”That is his way, mother,” Natalie said, in a still lower voice. ”It is always about others he is thinking--how to do one a kindness.”
”I presume,” he said, in quite a matter-of-fact way, ”that you do not wish your being in London to become known?”
She looked up timidly, but in truth she could hardly take her attention away from this newly-found daughter of hers for a single second. She still continued stroking the soft hair and rounded cheek as she said,
”If that is possible.”
”It would not be long possible in an open thoroughfare like this,” he said; ”But I think I could find you a small old-fas.h.i.+oned house down about Brompton, with a garden and a high wall. I have pa.s.sed such places occasionally. There Natalie could come to see you, and walk with you.