d fainter grow the notes on the trembling string, so that you
can scarcely tell them from the cool plashing of the fountains ...
"_Santa Lucia!... Santa Lucia!_"....

"Natalushka," said her father, laughing, "you must take us to Venice
now."

The young Hungarian girl rose, and put the zither aside.

"It is an amusement for the children," she said.

She went to the piano, which was open, and took down a piece of
music--it was Kucken's "Maid of Judah." Now, hitherto, George Brand had
only heard her murmur a low, harmonious second to one or other of the
airs she had been playing; and he was quite unprepared for the passion
and fervor which her rich, deep, resonant, contralto voice threw into
this wail of indignation and despair. This was the voice of a woman, not
of a girl; and it was with the proud passion of a woman that she seemed
to send this cry to Heaven for reparation, and justice, and revenge. And
surely it was not only of the sorrows of the land of Judah she was
thinking!--it was a wider cry--the cry of the oppressed, and the
suffering, and the heart-broken in every clime--

"O blest native land! O fatherland mine!
How long for thy refuge in vain shall I pine?"

He could have believed there were tears in her eyes just then; but there
were none, he knew, when she came to the fierce piteous appeal that
followed--

"Where, where are thy proud sons, so lordly in might?
All mown down and fallen in blood-welling fight!
Thy cities are ruin, thy valleys lie waste,
Their summer enchantment the foe hath erased.
O blest native land! how long shalt decline?
When, when will the Lord cry, 'Revenge, it is Mine!'"

The zither speaks; but there is a speech beyond that of the zither. The
penetrating vibration of this rich and pathetic voice was a thing not
easily to be forgotten. When the two friends left the house, they found
themselves in the chill darkness of an English night in February. Surely
it must have seemed to them that they had been dwelling for a period in
warmer climes, with gay colors, and warmth, and sweet sounds around
them. They walked for some time in silence.

"Well," said Lord Evelyn, at last, "what do you think of them?"

"I don't know," said the other, after a pause. "I am puzzled. How did
you come to know them?"

"I came to know Lind through a newspaper reporter called O'Halloran. I
should like to introduce you to him too."

George Brand soon afterward