ome
hope. Off you went to see Natalie; you came back with something in your
manner that told me you had seen her and had been received favorably.
Now it is only one more day of happiness you hunger for, before going up
to the hard work of the North. Well, I don't wonder. But, at the same
time, you look a little too restless and anxious for a man who has just
won such a beautiful sweetheart."

"I am not so lucky as that, Evelyn," said he, absently.

"What, you did not see her?"

"Oh yes, I saw her; and I hope. But of course one craves for some full
assurance when such a prize is within reach; and--and I suppose one's
nerves are a little excited, so that you imagine possibilities and
dangers--"

He rose, and took a turn up and down the room.

"It is the old story, Evelyn. I distrust Lind."

"What has that to do with it?"

"As you say, what has that to do with it? If I had Natalie's full
promise, I should care for nothing. She is a woman; she is not a school
girl, to be frightened. If I had only that, I should start off for the
North with a light heart."

"Why not secure it, then?"

"Perhaps it is scarcely fair to force myself on her at present until her
father returns. Then she will be more her own mistress. But the doubt--I
don't know when I may be back from the North--" At last he stopped
short. "Yes, I will see her to-morrow at all hazards."

By-and-by he began to tell his friend of the gay-hearted old albino he
had encountered at Lind's house; though in the mean time he reserved to
himself the secret of Natalie's mother being alive.

"Lind must have an extraordinary faculty," he said at length, "of
inspiring fear, and of getting people to obey him."

"He does not look a ferocious person," Lord Evelyn said, with a smile.
"I have always found him very courteous and pleasant--frank, amiable,
and all the rest of it."

"And yet here is this man Calabressa, an old friend of his; and he talks
of Lind with a sort of mysterious awe. He is not a man whom you must
think of thwarting. He is the Invulnerable, the Implacable. The fact is,
I was inclined to laugh at my good friend Calabressa; but all the same,
it was quite apparent that the effect Lind had produced on his mind was
real enough."

"Well, you know," said Lord Evelyn, "Lind has a great organization to
control, and he must be a strict disciplinarian. It is the object of his
life; everything else is of minor importance. Even you confess that you
admire