presence, '_Do you think he will be fool
enough to come when they are watching for him at every turn?_' To
which the other replied, '_I am sure he will come, for he loved her._'
Then came the funeral, a dark and dreary day, which, when I look back
upon it all now, seems like the beginning of a new life to me. I was
only a little child, and when they brought me home from the cemetery I
fell asleep almost before my head touched the pillow. In the middle of
the night I was awakened by a loud cry, a trampling on the stairs, and
a moment later the noise of men fighting in the corridor outside my
room. Terrified almost out of my senses, I crouched in my little bed
and listened. Then an order was given by some one, followed by the
sound of more trampling on the stairs, and after that all was silence.
Though, of course, I did not know it then, my father had been arrested
by the police as a dangerous Nihilist, and, a month later, was on his
way to Siberia. It was not until I was old enough to understand, that
I heard that he had been concerned in an attempt upon the life of the
Czar. From what was told me then, and from what I have since learnt,
there seems to have been little or no doubt but that he was connected
with a dangerous band of Nihilists, and that he was not only mixed up
in the affair for which he was condemned to penal servitude for life,
but that he was one of the originators of the plot itself. And yet the
only recollection I have of him is of a kind and loving father who,
when he was at home, used to tell me fairy stories, and who declared
his wife to be the sweetest woman in the world."

"Poor little girl," said Browne, pressing the hand he held, "you had
indeed an unhappy childhood; but you have not yet told me how you came
to be placed under the guardianship of Madame Bernstein."

"She was an old friend of my father's," Katherine replied; "and when my
mother died, and he was sent to Siberia, she adopted me. I owe her a
debt of gratitude that I can never repay; for, though she is perhaps a
little peculiar in some things, she has been a very good and kind
friend to me."

"And have you always been--well, shall we say--dependent on her?" asked
Browne, with a little diffidence, for it was a delicate matter for a
young man to touch upon with a proud and high-spirited girl.

"Oh no," Katherine replied. "You see, soon after my mother's death it
was discovered by some one--I cannot remember who--that one