lfilled to the
letter. To get rid of her, Brand informed her that madame had not dined,
and would be glad to have anything that happened to be in the house.
Then she left, and he was about to leave also.

"No," said the beautiful mother to him, with a smile on the pale face.
"Sit down; I have something to say to you."

He sat down, his hat still in his hand.

"I have not thanked you," she said. "I see who has done all this: do you
think a stranger would know to have the white-rose scent for me that
Natalie uses? She was right: you are kind--you think of others."

"It is nothing--it is nothing," he said, hastily, and with all an
Englishman's embarrassment.

"My dear friend," said his companion, with a grave kindness in her tone,
and a look of affectionate interest in her eyes, "I am going to prove my
gratitude to you. I am going to prevent--what do you call it?--a lover's
quarrel."

He started.

"Yesterday," she continued, still regarding him in that kindly way,
"before we left your rooms, Natalushka was very reserved toward you; was
it not so? I perceived it; and you?"

"I--I thought she was tired," he stammered.

"To-morrow you are to fetch her here; and what if you find her still
more reserved--even cold toward you? You will be pained, perhaps
alarmed. Ah, my dear friend, life is made very bitter sometimes by
mistakes; so it is that I must tell you the reason. The child loves you;
be sure of that. Yes; but she thinks that she has been too frank in
saying so--in time of trouble and anxiety; and now--now that you are
perhaps not going to America--now that perhaps all the trouble is
over--now she is beginning to think she ought to be a little more
discreet, as other young ladies are. The child means no harm, but you
and she must not quarrel."

He took her hand to bid her good-bye.

"Natalie and I are not likely to quarrel," said he, cheerfully. "Now I
am going away. If I stayed, you would do nothing but talk about her,
whereas it is necessary that you should have some dinner, then read one
of these books for an hour or so, then go to bed and have a long, sound
night's rest. You must be looking your brightest when she comes to see
you to-morrow."

And indeed, as it turned out subsequently, this warning; of the
mother's was not wholly unnecessary. Next day at eleven o'clock, as had
previously been arranged, Brand met Natalie at the corner of Great
Stanhope Street to escort her to the house to which her moth