tly have. Perhaps the face, with its intellectual forehead
and the proud and firmly cut mouth, was a trifle too calm and
self-reliant for a young girl: but all the softness of expression that
was wanted, all the gentle and gracious timidity that we associate with
maidenhood, lay in the large, and dark, and lustrous eyes. When, by
accident, she turned aside, and he saw the outline of that clear,
olive-complexioned face, only broken by the outward curve of the long
black lashes, he had to confess to himself that, adventuress or no
adventuress, prophetess or no prophetess, Natalie Lind was possessed of
about the most beautiful profile he had ever beheld, while she had the
air and the bearing of a queen.

Her father and he talked of the various trifling things of the moment;
but what he was chiefly thinking of was the singular calm and
self-possession of this young girl. When she spoke, her dark, soft eyes
regarded him without fear. Her manner was simple and natural to the last
degree; perhaps with the least touch added of maidenly reserve. He was
forced even to admire the simplicity of her dress--cream or canary white
it was, with a bit of white fur round the neck and round the tight
wrists. The only strong color was that of the scarlet geraniums which
she wore in her bosom, and in the splendid masses of her hair; and the
vertical sharp line of scarlet of her closed fan.

Once only, during this interval of waiting, did he find that calm
serenity of hers disturbed. He happened to observe the photograph of a
very handsome woman near him on the table. She told him she had had a
parcel of photographs of friends of hers just sent over from Vienna:
some of them very pretty. She went to another table, and brought over a
handful. He glanced at them only a second or two.

"I see they are mostly from Vienna: are they Austrian ladies?" he asked.

"They live in Austria, but they are not Austrians," she answered. And
then she added, with a touch of scorn about the beautiful mouth, "Our
friends and we don't belong to the women-floggers!"

"Natalie!" her father said; but he smiled all the same.

"I will tell you one of my earliest recollections," she said: "I
remember it very well. Kossuth was carrying me round the room on his
shoulder. I suppose I had been listening to the talk of the gentlemen;
for I said to him, 'When they burned my papa in effigy at Pesth, why was
I not allowed to go and see?' And he said--I remember the sound o