,
and poultry to feed; and your neighbors will talk to you at dinner about
foxes and dogs and horses and the clergyman's charities. It will be a
healthy life, Natalie: perhaps you will get stout and rosy, like an
English matron. But your old friends--you will have forgotten them."

"Never!--never!" she said, vehemently; and, despite herself, her eyes
filled with tears.

"Then we will take Mr. Brand. The Buckinghamshire house is open again.
An Englishman's house is his castle; there is a great deal of work in
superintending it, its entertainments, its dependents. Perhaps he has a
pack of foxhounds; no doubt he is a justice of the peace, and the terror
of poachers. But in the midst of all this hunting, and giving of
dinner-parties, and shooting of pheasants, do you think he has much time
or thought for the future of the millions of poor wretches all over
Europe who once claimed his care? Not much! That was in his days of
irresponsible bachelorhood. Now he is settled down--he is a country
gentleman. The world can set itself right without him. He is anxious
about the price of wheat."

"Ah, how you mistake him, papa!" said she, proudly. And there was a
proud light on her face too as she rose and quickly went to a small
escritoire close by. A few seconds sufficed her to write a short note,
which she brought back to her father.

"There," said she, "I will abide by that test. If he says 'yes,' I will
never see him again--never speak one word to him again."

Her father took the note and read it. It was as follows:

"My Dear Friend,--I am anxious about the future for both of us. If you
will promise me, now and at once, to give up the work you are engaged
in, I will be your wife, when and where you will.

NATALIE."

"Send it!" she said, proudly. "I am not afraid. If he says 'yes,' I will
never see him again."

The challenge was not accepted. He tore the note in two and flung it
into the grate.

"It is time to put an end to this folly," he said impatiently. "I have
shown you what persistence in it would bring on yourself. You would be
estranged from everything and every one you have hitherto been
interested in; you would have to begin a new life, for which you are not
fitted; you would be the means of doing our cause an irreparable injury.
Yes, I say so frankly. The withdrawal of this man Brand, which would
certainly follow, sooner or later, on his marriage, would be a great
blow to us. We have need of his work; we h