ration.

She could not help noticing it, for she was a woman, and for the same
reason she saw that it was so absolutely honest and involuntary that
it was impossible for any woman to take offence at it. A quick bright
flush swept up her lovely face as his hand closed upon hers, her
darkly-fringed lids fell for an instant over the most wonderful pair
of sapphire-blue eyes that Arnold had ever even dreamed of, and when
she raised them again the flush had gone, and she said in a sweet,
frank voice--

"I am the daughter of Natas, and he has desired me to bid you welcome
in his name, and I hope you will let me do so in my own as well. We
are all dying to see this wonderful invention of yours. I suppose you
are going to satisfy our feminine curiosity, are you not?"

The daughter of Natas! This lovely girl, in the first sweet flush of
her pure and innocent womanhood, the daughter of the unknown and
mysterious being whose ill-omened name caused a shudder if it was
only whispered in the homes of the rich and powerful; the name with
which the death-sentences of the Terrorists were invariably signed,
and which had come to be an infallible guarantee that they would be
carried out to the letter.

No death-warrants of the most powerful sovereigns of Europe were more
certain harbingers of inevitable doom than were those which bore this
dreaded name. Whether he were high or low, the man who received one
of them made ready for his end. He knew not where or when the fatal
blow would be struck. He only knew that the invisible hand of the
Terror would strike him as surely in the uttermost ends of the earth
as it would in the palace or the fortress. Never once had it missed
its aim, and never once had the slightest clue been obtained to the
identity of the hand that held the knife or pistol.

Some such thoughts as these flashed one after another through
Arnold's brain as he stood talking with Natasha. He saw at once why
she had only that one name. It was enough, and it was not long before
he learnt that it was the symbol of an authority in the Circle that
admitted of no question.

She was the envoy of him whose word was law, absolute and
irrevocable, to every member of the Brotherhood; to disobey whom was
death; and to obey whom had, so far at least, meant swift and
invariable success, even where it seemed least to be hoped for.

Of course, Natasha's almost girlish question about the air-ship was
really a command, which would have