“Natalie,” said George Brand, pretending to be very anxious about the time, “could you get your mother’s things for her?  I think we shall be down there by a quarter past two.”

She turned to him with her streaming eyes.

“Yes, we will go with you.  Do not let us be separated.”

“Then look sharp,” said he, severely.

Natalie took her mother into the adjoining room.  Brand, standing at the window, succeeded in catching the eye of a cab-man, whom he signaled to come to the door below.  Presently the two women appeared.

“Now,” he said, “Miss Natalie, there is to be no more crying.”

“Oh no!” she said, smiling quite radiantly.  “And I am so anxious to see the rooms—­I have heard so much of them from Lord Evelyn.”

She said nothing further then, for she was passing before him on her way out.  In doing so, she managed, unseen, to pick up the miniature she had thrown on the table.  She had made believe to despise that portrait very much; but all the same, as they went down the dark staircase, she conveyed it back to the secret little pocket she had made for it—­next her heart.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

A SUMMONS.

“Mother,” said the girl, in the soft-sounding Magyar, as these two were together going down-stairs, “give me your hand; let me hold it tight, to make sure.  All the way here I kept terrifying myself by thinking it must be a dream; that I should wake, and find the world empty without you, just as before.  But now—­now with your hand in mine, I am sure.”

“Natalushka, you can hear me speak also.  Ghosts do not speak like this, do they?”

Brand had preceded them to open the door.  As Natalie was passing him she paused for a second, and regarded him with the beautiful, tender, dark eyes.

“I am not likely to forget what I owe to you,” she said in English.

He followed them into the cab.

“What you owe to me?” he said, lightly.  “You owe me nothing at all.  But if you wish to do me a good turn, you may pretend to be pleased with whatever old Waters can get together for you.  The poor old fellow will be in a dreadful state.  To entertain two ladies, and not a moment of warning!  However, we will show you the river, and the boats and things, and give him a few minutes’ grace.”

Indeed, it was entirely as a sort of harmless frolic that he chose to regard this present excursion of theirs.  He was afraid of the effect of excessive emotion on this worn woman, and he was anxious that she should see her daughter cheerful and happy.  He would not have them think of any future; above all, he would have nothing said about himself or America; it was all an affair of the moment—­the joyous re-union of mother and daughter—­a pleasant morning with London all busy and astir—­the only serious thing in the whole world the possible anxieties and struggles of the venerable major-domo in Buckingham Street.