"It was; but then he was pardoned. This time there is no hope."

She stood silent for a second or two; then she said, regarding him with a sad look,

"You think me heartless, Stefan. You think I ought to be overwhelmed with grief. But--but I have been kept from my child for seventeen years.

I have lived with the threat of the betrayal of my father hanging over me. The affection of a wife cannot endure everything. Still, I am--sorry--"

Her eyes were cast down, and they slowly filled with tears. Von Zoesch breathed more freely. He was eagerly explaining to her how this result had become inevitable--how he himself had had no partic.i.p.ation in it, and so forth--when Natalie Lind stepped quickly up to them, looking from the one to the other. She saw something was wrong.

"Mother, what is it?" she said, in vague fear. She turned to Von Zoesch.

"Oh, sir, if there is something you have not told me--if there is trouble--why was it not to me that you spoke?"

She took hold of her mother's hand.

"Mother, what is it?"

"My dear young lady," said Von Zoesch, interposing, "you know that life is made up of both bitter and sweet--"

"I wish to know, signore," she said, proudly, "what it is you have told my mother. If there is trouble, it is for her daughter to share it."

"Well, then, dear young lady, I will tell you," he said, "though it will grieve you also. I must explain to you. You cannot suppose that the happy news I deliver to you was the result of the will of any one man, or number of men. No. It was the result of the application of law and justice. Your--sweetheart, shall I call him?--was intrusted with a grave duty, which would most probably have cost him his life. In the ordinary way, no one could have released him from it, however much certain friends of yours here might have been interested in you, and grieved to see you unhappy. But there was this possibility--it was even a probability--that he had been selected for this service unfairly. Then, no doubt, if that could be proved, he ought to be released."

"Yes, yes," she said, impatiently.

"That was proved. Unfortunately, I have to tell you that among those convicted of this conspiracy was your father. Well, the laws of our a.s.sociation are strict--they are even terrible where a delinquent is in a position of high responsibility. My dear young lady, I must tell you the truth: your father has been adjudged guilty--and--and the punishment is--death!"

She uttered a quick, short cry of alarm, and turned with frightened eyes to her mother.

"Mother, is it true? is it true?"

The mother did not answer; she had clasped her trembling hands. Then the girl turned; there was a proud pa.s.sion in her voice.

"Oh, sir, what tiger is there among you that is so athirst for blood?

You save one man's life--after intercession and prayer you save one man's life--only to seize on that of another. And it is to me--it is to me, his daughter--that you come with congratulations! I am only a child; I am to be pleased: you speak of a sweetheart; but you do not tell me that you are about to murder my father! You give me my lover; in exchange you take my father's life. Is there a woman in all the world so despicable as to accept her happiness at such a cost?"

Involuntarily she crushed up the telegram she held in her hand and threw it away from her.

"It is not I, at all events," she exclaimed. "Oh, signore, you should not have mocked me with your congratulations. That is not the happiness you should offer to a daughter. But you have not killed him yet--there is time; let things be as they were; that is what my sweetheart, as you call him, will say; he and I are not afraid to suffer. Surely, rather that, than that he should marry a girl so heartless and cowardly as to purchase her happiness at the cost of her father's life?"

"My dear young lady," he said, with a great pity and concern in his face, "I can a.s.sure you what you think of is impossible. What is done cannot be undone."

Her proud indignation now gave way to terror.

"Oh no, signore, you cannot mean that! I cannot believe it! You have saved one man--oh, signore, for the love of Heaven, this other also!

Have pity! How can I live, if I know that I have killed my father?"

He took both her hands in his, and strove to soothe down her wild terror and dismay. He declared to her she had nothing to do with it, no more than himself; that her father had been tried by his colleagues; that if he had not been, a fearful act of treachery would have been committed.

She listened, or appeared to listen; but her lips were pale; her eyes had a strange look in them; she was breathless.

"Calabressa said they were all-powerful," she interrupted suddenly. "But are they all-powerful to slay only? Oh no, I cannot believe it! I will go to them; it cannot be too late; I will say to them that I would rather have died than appealed to them if I had known that this was to be the terrible result. And Calabressa--why did he not warn me? Or is he one of the blood-thirsty ones also--one of the tigers that crouch in the dark? Oh, signore, if they are all-powerful, they are all-powerful to pardon. May I not go to themselves?"

"It would be useless, my dear signorina," said Von Zoesch, with deep compa.s.sion in his voice. "I am sorry to grieve you, but justice has been done, and the decision is past recall. And do not blame poor old Calabressa--"

At this moment the bell of the outer gate rang, echoing through the empty house, and he started somewhat.

"Come, child," said her mother. "We have taken up too much of your time, Stefan. I wish there had been no drawback to your good news."

"At the present moment," he said, glancing somewhat anxiously toward the building, "I cannot ask you to stay, Natalie; but on some other occasion, and as soon as you please, I will give you any information you may wish. Remember, you have good friends here."

Natalie suffered herself to be led away. She seemed too horror-stricken to be able to speak. Von Zoesch accompanied them only to the terrace, and there bade them good-bye. Granaglia was waiting to show them to the gate. A few moments afterward they were in their carriage, returning to Naples.

They sat silent for some time, the mother regarding her daughter anxiously.

"Natalushka, what are you thinking of?"

The girl started: her eyes were filled with a haunting fear, as if she had just seen some terrible thing. And yet she spoke slowly and sadly and wistfully.

"I was thinking, mother, that perhaps it was not so hard to be condemned to die; for then there would come an end to one's suffering. And I was wondering whether there had been many women in the world who had to accuse themselves of taking a part in bringing about their own father's death. Oh, I hope not--I hope not!"

A second afterward she added, with more than the bitterness of tears in her trembling voice, "And--and I was thinking of General von Zoesch's congratulations, mother."

CHAPTER LVI.

A COMMISSION.

Lord Evelyn obeyed his friend's summons in considerable anxiety, if not even alarm; for he made no doubt that it had some connection with that mysterious undertaking to which Brand was pledged; but when he reached Lisle Street, and was shown into the larger room, no very serious business seemed going forward. Two or three of the best-known to him among the English members of the Society were present, grouped round a certain Irish M.P., who, with twinkling eyes but otherwise grave face, was describing the makeshifts of some provincial manager or other who could not pay his company their weekly salary. To the further surprise of the new-comer, also, Mr. Lind was absent; his chair was occupied by Gathorne Edwards.

He was asked to go into an inner room; and there he found Brand, looking much more like himself than he had done for some time back.

"It is awfully kind of you, Evelyn, to come at once. I heard you had returned to town yesterday. Well, what of the old people down in Wiltshire?"

Lord Evelyn was quite thrown off his guard by this frank cheerfulness.

He forgot the uneasy forebodings with which he had left his house.

"Oh, capital old people!" he said, putting his hat and umbrella on the table--"excellent. But you see, Brand, it becomes a serious question if I have to bury myself in the country, and drink port-wine after dinner, and listen to full-blown, full-fed glorious old Tories, every time a sister of mine gets engaged to be married. And now that Rosalys has begun it, they'll all take to it, one after the other, like sheep jumping a ditch."

"They say Milbanke is a very nice young fellow," said Brand.

"Petted, a little. But then, an only son, and heaps of money: perhaps its natural. I know he is a ghastly hypocrite," added Lord Evelyn, who seemed to have some little grudge against his brother-in-law in prospect. "It was too bad of him to go egging on those old megatheria to talk politics until they were red in the face, denouncing Free-trade, and abusing the Ballot, and foretelling the ruin of the former as soon as the Education Act began to work. Then he pretended to be on their side--"

"What did you do?"

"I sat quiet. I was afraid I might be eaten. I relapsed into contemplation; and began to compose a volume on 'Tory Types: Some Survivals in English Politics. For the Information of Town Readers.'"

"Well, now you have done your duty, and cemented the alliance between the two families--by drinking port-wine, I suppose--what do you say to a little pleasure-trip?"