ch question, Mr. Brand knows that it is of great
importance some one like himself should go to Philadelphia; and at the
moment I don't see any one who could do as well. Have you anything
further to say?"

"No, papa--except good night." She kissed him on the forehead and went
away to her own room.

That was a night of wild unrest for Natalie Lind. It was her father
himself who had represented to her all that banishment from his native
country meant to an Englishman; and in her heart of hearts she believed
that it was through her this doom had befallen George Brand. She knew he
would not complain. He professed to her that it was only in the
discharge of an ordinary duty he was leaving England: others had
suffered more for less reason; it was nothing; why should she blame
herself? But all the same, through this long, restless, agonizing night
she accused herself of having driven him from his country and his
friends, of having made an exile of him. And again and again she put
before herself the case she had submitted to Madame Potecki; and again
and again she asked herself what her own mother would have done, with
her lover going away to a strange land.

In the morning, long before it was light, and while as yet she had not
slept for a second, she rose, threw a dressing-gown round her, lit the
gas, and went to the little escritoire that stood by the window. Her
hand was trembling when she sat down to write, but it was not with the
cold. There was a proud look on her face. This was what she wrote:

"My lover and husband,--You are going away from your own country,
perhaps forever; and I think it is partly through me that all this has
happened. What can I do? Only this; that I offer to go with you, if you
will take me. I am your wife; why should you go alone?"'

There was no signature. She folded the paper, and placed it in an
envelope, and carefully locked it up. Then she put out the light and
went back to bed again, and fell into a sound, happy, contented
sleep--the untroubled sleep of a child.

Then in the morning how bright and light-hearted she was!

Anneli could not understand this change that had suddenly come over her
young mistress. She said little, but there was a happy light on her
face; she sung "Du Schwert an meiner Linken" in snatches, as she was
dressing her hair; and she presented Anneli with a necklace of Turkish
silver coins.

She was down at South Kensington Museum considerably before eleven
o'cloc