“Madam,” he went on, “my dear Countess, I could but overhear you refer to my own name.  If it has any reputation in your eyes, let that plead as my excuse for intruding in this manner.  Believe me, nothing would induce me to take such a step except business of importance.”

“It is, then, of business?” Her voice, as he noted once more, was clear and full, her enunciation without provincial slur, clean and highbred.

“I hope something not wholly outside your liking.”

“Of course I do not understand.”  She sat still looking at him full, her hands, clasping her little fan, a trifle raised.

“Then let me hasten to make all plain.  I am aware of a part of your history and of a part of your plans, Madam; I am not unaware of certain ambitions of your own—­I am forced to be so frank in these conditions.  You are interested in the cause of Hungary.”

“Place it wider, Sir,” she said.  “In humanity!”

“Hence you have come to America to carry forward certain of your plans.  Even now you have undertaken the greatest and most daring work of altruism this country ever knew.”

She made no answer but to smile at him, a wide and half lazy smile, disclosing her white and even teeth.  The jewels in her dark hair glistened as she nodded slightly.  Emboldened, he went on: 

“And you find all things at a deadlock in Washington to-day.  Humanity is placed away in linen on the shelf in America, to-day.  Dust must not filter through the protection of this mighty compromise which our two great parties have accomplished!  We must not talk of principles, must not stir sedition, at this time.  Whig and Democrat must tiptoe, both of them, nor wake this sleeping dog of slavery.  Only a few, Madam, only a few, have the hardihood to assert their beliefs.  Only a few venture to cast defiance even to the dictum of Webster himself.  He says to us that conscience should not be above the law.  I say to you, Madam, that conscience should be the only law.”

“Are you for freedom, Sir?” she asked slowly.  “Are you for humanity?”

“Madam, as I hope reward, I am!  Those of us who dare say so much are few in numbers to-day.  We are so few, my dear lady, that we belong together.  All of us who have influence—­and that I trust may be said of both of us, who now meet for the first time—­we are so few that I, a stranger to you, though not, I trust, wholly unrecommended, dare come to you to-night.”

“With what purpose, then.  Sir?”

“With the immediate purpose of learning at first hand the truth of the revolutionary system in Europe.  I have not been abroad of late, indeed not for some years.  But I know that our diplomacy is all a-tangle.  The reports are at variance, and we get them colored by partisan politics.  This slavery agitation is simply a political game, at which both parties and all sides are merely playing.  Party desirability, party safety—­that is the cry in the South as much as in the North.  Yet all the time I know, as you know, of the hundreds of thousands of men who are leaving Europe to come to this country.  A wave of moral change is bound to sweep across the North.  Madam, we dwell on the eve of revolution here in America as well as in Europe.  Now do you see why I have come to you to-night?  Have we not much in common?”