om my life; I do not know whether to laugh or to
cry. But _courage_! we will put a good face on our little griefs. This
evening--this evening I will pretend to myself something--I am going to
live my old life over again--for an hour; I will blow a horn as soon as
I have crossed the Erlau, and they will hear it up at the big house
among the pines, where the lights are shining through the dark, and they
will send a servant down to open the gates; and you will appear at the
hall-door, and say, 'Signor Calabressa, why do you make such a noise to
awaken the dogs?' And I will say, 'Dear Miss Berezolyi, the pine-woods
are frightfully dark; may I not scare away the ghosts?"

"It was my mother who received you," the girl said, in a low voice.

"It was Natalie then; to-night it will be Natalushka."

He spoke lightly, so as not to make these reminiscences too serious. But
the conjunction of the two names seemed suddenly to startle the girl.
She stopped, and looked him in the face.

"It was you, then," she said, "who sent me the locket?"

"What locket?" he said, with surprise.

"The locket the lady dropped into my lap--'_From Natalie to
Natalushka_.'"

"I declare to you, little daughter, I never heard of it."

The girl looked bewildered.

"Ah, how stupid I am!" she exclaimed. "I could not understand. But if
they always called her Natalie, and me Natalushka--"

She paused for a moment to collect her thoughts.

"Signor Calabressa, what does it mean?" she said, almost wildly. "If one
sends me a locket--'_From Natalie to Natalushka_'--was it my mother's?
Did she intend it for me? Did she leave it for me with some one, long
ago? How could it come into the hands of a stranger?"

Calabressa himself seemed rather bewildered--almost alarmed.

"My little daughter, you have no doubt guessed right," he said,
soothingly. "Your mother may have meant it for you--and--and perhaps it
was lost--and just recovered--"

"Signor Calabressa," said she--and he could have fancied it was her
mother who was speaking in that low, earnest, almost sad voice--"you
said you would do me an act of friendship if I asked you. I cannot ask
my father; he seems too grieved to speak of my mother at any time; but
do you think you could find out who the lady was who brought that locket
to me? That would be kind of you, if you could do that."

CHAPTER XVIII.

HER ANSWER.

Humphreys, the delegate from the North, and O'Halloran, the Irish
reporter