At last, as Humphreys and O’Halloran were leaving, Brand said, with an effort,

“No, it is no use, Humphreys.  I must remain in London one more day.  You go down to-morrow; I shall come by the first train next morning.  Molyneux and the others won’t be leaving for some days.”

“Very well, sir; good-night, sir.”

Brand returned into the room, and threw himself into an easy-chair; his only companion now was his old friend Evelyn.

The younger man regarded him.

“I can tell the whole story, Brand; I have been reading it in your face.  You were troubled and perplexed before you got that letter.  It gave some hope.  Off you went to see Natalie; you came back with something in your manner that told me you had seen her and had been received favorably.  Now it is only one more day of happiness you hunger for, before going up to the hard work of the North.  Well, I don’t wonder.  But, at the same time, you look a little too restless and anxious for a man who has just won such a beautiful sweetheart.”

“I am not so lucky as that, Evelyn,” said he, absently.

“What, you did not see her?”

“Oh yes, I saw her; and I hope.  But of course one craves for some full assurance when such a prize is within reach; and—­and I suppose one’s nerves are a little excited, so that you imagine possibilities and dangers—­”

He rose, and took a turn up and down the room.

“It is the old story, Evelyn.  I distrust Lind.”

“What has that to do with it?”

“As you say, what has that to do with it?  If I had Natalie’s full promise, I should care for nothing.  She is a woman; she is not a school girl, to be frightened.  If I had only that, I should start off for the North with a light heart.”

“Why not secure it, then?”

“Perhaps it is scarcely fair to force myself on her at present until her father returns.  Then she will be more her own mistress.  But the doubt—­I don’t know when I may be back from the North—­” At last he stopped short.  “Yes, I will see her to-morrow at all hazards.”

By-and-by he began to tell his friend of the gay-hearted old albino he had encountered at Lind’s house; though in the mean time he reserved to himself the secret of Natalie’s mother being alive.

“Lind must have an extraordinary faculty,” he said at length, “of inspiring fear, and of getting people to obey him.”

“He does not look a ferocious person,” Lord Evelyn said, with a smile.  “I have always found him very courteous and pleasant—­frank, amiable, and all the rest of it.”

“And yet here is this man Calabressa, an old friend of his; and he talks of Lind with a sort of mysterious awe.  He is not a man whom you must think of thwarting.  He is the Invulnerable, the Implacable.  The fact is, I was inclined to laugh at my good friend Calabressa; but all the same, it was quite apparent that the effect Lind had produced on his mind was real enough.”