ooking coat was tightly buttoned; he had burnished up the gold
braid of his cap; and as he now ascended the stairs he gathered the ends
of his mustache out of his yellow-white beard and curled them round and
round his fingers and pulled them out straight. He had already assumed a
pleasant smile.

But when he entered the shaded drawing-room, and beheld this figure
before him, all the dancing-master's manner instantly fled from him. He
seemed thunderstruck; he shrunk back a little; his cap fell to the
floor; he could not utter a word.

"Excuse me--excuse me, mademoiselle," he gasped out at length, in his
odd French. "Ah, it is like a ghost--like other years come back--"

He stared at her.

"I am very pleased to see you, sir," said she to him, gently, in
Italian.

"Her voice also--her voice also!" he exclaimed, almost to himself, in
the same tongue. "Signorina, you will forgive me--but--when one sees an
old friend--you are so like--ah, so like--"

"You are speaking of my mother?" the girl said, with her eyes cast down.
"I have been told that I was like her. You knew her, signore?"

Calabressa pulled himself together somewhat. He picked up his cap; he
assumed a more business-like air.

"Oh yes, signorina, I knew her," he said, with an apparent carelessness,
but he was regarding her all the same. "Yes, I knew her well. We were
friends long before she married. What, are you surprised that I am so
old? Do you know that I can remember you when you were a very little
thing--at Dunkirk it was--and what a valiant young lady you were, and
you would go to fight the Russians all by yourself! And you--you do not
remember your mother?"

"I cannot tell," she said, sadly. "They say it is impossible, and yet I
seem to remember one who loved me, and my grief when I asked for her and
found she would never come back--or else that is only my recollection of
what I was told by others. But what of that? I know where she is now:
she is my constant companion. I know she loved me; I know she is always
regarding me; I talk to her, so that I am never quite alone; at night I
pray to her, as if she were a saint--"

She turned aside somewhat; her eyes were full of tears. Calabressa said
quickly,

"Ah, signorina, why recall what is so sad? It is so useless. _Allons
donc!_ shall I tell you of my surprise when I saw you first? A
ghost--that is nothing! It is true, your father warned me. He said, 'The
little Natalushka is a woman now.' But ho