ttered in a low voice, though there was no
by-stander. But Calabressa, with a lofty gesture, replied,

"My friend, we are not always on commissions. Sometimes we have a little
liberty--a little money--a notion in our head. And if one cannot exactly
travel _en prince_, _n'importe!_ we have our little excursion. And if
one has one's sweetheart to see? Do you know, friend Beratinsky, that I
have been dining with Natalie--the little Natalushka, as, she used to be
called?"

Beratinsky glanced quickly at him with the black, piercing eyes.

"Ah, the beautiful child! the beautiful child!" Calabressa exclaimed,
as if he was addressing some one not present. "The mouth sweet,
pathetic, like that in Titian's Assumption: you have seen the picture in
the Venice Academy? But she is darker than Titian's Virgin; she is of
the black, handsome Magyar breed, like her mother. You never saw her
mother, Beratinsky?"

"No," said the other, rather surlily. "Come, sit down and have a cigar."

"A cigarette--a cigarette and a little cognac, if you please," said
Calabressa, when the three companions had gone along to the middle of
the hall and taken their seats. "Ah, it was such a surprise to me: the
sight of her grown to be a woman, and the perfect, beautiful image of
her mother--the very voice too--I could have thought it was a dream."

"Did you come here to talk of nothing but Lind's daughter?" said
Beratinsky, with scant courtesy.

"Precisely," remarked Calabressa, in absolute good-humor. "But before
that a word."

He glanced round this assemblage of foreign-looking persons, no doubt
guessing at the various nationalities indicated by physique and
complexion--Prussian, Pole, Rhinelander, Swiss, and what not. If the
company, in English eyes, might have looked Bohemian--that is to say,
unconventional in manner and costume--the Bohemianism, at all events,
was of a well-to-do, cheerful, good-humored character. There was a good
deal of talking besides the music.

"These gentlemen," said Calabressa, in a low voice, "are they
friends--are they with us?"

"Only one or two," said Beratinsky.

"You do not come here to proselytize, then?"

"One must amuse one's self sometimes," said the little, fat,
black-haired Pole, somewhat gruffly.

"Then one must take care what one says!"

"I presume that is generally the case, friend Calabressa."

But Calabressa was not offended. He was interested in what was going on.

"Par exemple," he said, in