This was enough for George Brand.  He was not thrusting himself unfairly on her seclusion if he interposed to protect her from menace.  Instantly he crossed the road.

“Who are you?  What do you want?” This was what he said; but what he did was to drive the man back a couple of yards.

A hand was laid on his arm quickly.

“He is in trouble,” Natalie said, calmly.  “He wants to see papa; he has come a long way; he does not understand that papa is in America.  If you could only convince him—­But you do not talk Russian.”

“I can talk English,” said Brand, regarding the maniac-looking person before him with angry brows.  “Will you go indoors, Miss Lind, and leave him to me.  I will talk an English to him that he will understand.”

“Is that the way you answer an appeal for help?” said she, with gentle reproof.  “The man is in trouble.  If I persuade him to go with you, will you take him to papa’s chambers?  Either Beratinsky or Heinrich Reitzei will be there.”

“Reitzei is there.”

“He will hear what this man has to say.  Will you be so kind?”

“I will do anything to rid you of this fellow, who looks more like a madman than a beggar.”

She stepped forward and spoke to the man again—­her voice sounded gentle and persuasive to Brand, in this tongue which he could not understand.  When she had finished, the uncouth person in the tattered garments dropped on both knees on the pavement, and took her hand in his, and kissed it in passionate gratitude.  Then he rose, and stood with his cap in his hand.

“He will go with you.  I am so sorry to trouble you, Mr. Brand; and I have not even said, ‘How do you do?’”

To hear this beautiful voice after so long a silence—­to find those calm, dark, friendly eyes regarding him—­bewildered him, or gave him courage, he knew not which.  He said to her, with a quick flush on his forehead,

“May I come back to tell you how I succeed?”

She only hesitated for a second.

“If you have time.  If you care to take the trouble.”

He carried away with him the look of her face—­that filled his heart with sunlight.  In the hansom, into which he bundled his unkempt companion, if only he had known enough Russian, he would have expressed gratitude to him.  Beggar or maniac, or whatever he was, had he not been the means of procuring for George Brand that long-coveted, long-dreamed-of smile of welcome?

CHAPTER XIV.

A RUSSIAN EPISODE.

“Is that the way you answer an appeal for help?” With that gentle protest still lingering in his ear, he was not inclined to be hard on this unfortunate wretch who was in the cab with him; and yet at the same time he was resolved to prevent any repetition of the scene he had just witnessed.  At the last he discovered that the man had picked up in his wanderings a little German.  His own German was not first-rate; it was fluent, forcible, and accurate enough, so far as hotels and railway-stations were concerned; elsewhere it had a tendency to halt, blunder, and double back on itself.  But, at all events, he managed to convey to his companion the distinct intimation that any further troubling of that young lady would only procure for him broken head.