And his
English was faultless; he must have spoken it from his childhood. In the
midst of his first sentences, before they had permitted him to take a
chair, his eyes traveled past Miss Wing's face. She perceived that he
saw the picture; she knew that she grew pale; but, to her amazement, a
calm like the calm which had wrapped her senses on the day of her
finding the picture, closed about her again. "I beg pardon?" said he.

"Yes, that is Count von Butler's portrait," said she, in a clear voice,
without emotion. He was not so composed. "Then it _was_ you," he said.
Following her example, he took a chair and looked earnestly at the
pictured face. "When Miss Raimund spoke of you so warmly, I noticed that
the name was the same, and I determined to inquire, but it seemed to me
unlikely. Yet it is. Miss Wing, I have a message to you, from my uncle."

She noticed that there were gold motes in the air; and his pleasant,
blond face seemed to wander through them; the room was full of sunlight.

"I was with him when he died."

That was a strange thing to hear when the message of his uncle's death
had come to him in another country; she hoped that her brain was not
going to play her false.

"It was fifteen years ago last July, you know. I never knew how many
details you received, or only the bare fact in the papers."

Fifteen years! fifteen years! What was that date he was giving? That was
the day on which she sailed for America, the day after--what was that
story he was telling of a visit and a fire and a child rescued and an
accident? But still she listened with the same iron composure. The next
words she heard distinctly.

"It was like him to lose his life that way; and he did not grudge it.
Yet it was hard that I should be the only one of his blood with him. He
could speak with difficulty when he told me to take a lock of hair and
his signet ring to you. He dictated the address, himself, to me. 'You
must be sure and take it,' he said. 'It is to the lady that I hoped
would be my betrothed; you must tell grandmamma about it, too. She has
my picture and she knows--but tell her'--and then, I think his mind must
have wandered a little, for he smiled brightly at me, saying, '_I'll_
tell her, myself,' and then the doctors came. He said nothing more,
only once, they told me, he murmured something about his betrothed. But
I had the ring; he took it off his finger and kissed it and gave it to
me. Child as I was, I knew that it wa