Before the girl could speak he had turned to the mother.

“Come, my old friend, shall we go out into the garden?  I am sorry the reception-rooms in the villa are all dismantled; in truth, we are only temporary lodgers.  And I have a great many questions to ask you about old friends, particularly your father.”

“Stefan, can you not understand why I have permitted myself to leave Hungary?”

He glanced at her deep mourning.

“Ah, is that so?  Well, no one ever lived a braver life.  And how he kept up the old Hungarian traditions!—­the house a hotel from month’s end to month’s end:  no questions asked but ’Are you a stranger? then my house is yours.’”

He led the way down the stairs, chatting to this old friend of his; and though Natalie was burning with impatience, she forced herself to be silent.  Was it not all in her favor that this member of the mysterious Council should recur to these former days, and remind himself of his intimacy with her family?  She followed them in silence:  he seemed to have forgotten her existence.

They passed through the court-yard, and down some broad steps.  The true front of the building was on this seaward side—­a huge mass of pink, with green casements.  From the broad stone steps a series of terraces, prettily laid out, descended to a lawn; but, instead of passing down that way, the tall, soldierly-looking man led his companion by a side-flight of steps, which enabled them to enter an allee cut through a mass of olives and orange and lemon trees.  There were fig-trees along the wall by the side of this path; a fountain plashed coolly out there on the lawn, and beyond the opening showed the deep blue of the sea, with the clear waves breaking whitely on the shores.

They sat down on a garden-seat; and Natalie, sitting next her mother, waited patiently and breathlessly, scarcely hearing all this talk about old companions and friends.

At last the general said,

“Now about the business that brought you here:  is it serious?”

“Oh yes, very,” the mother said, with some color of excitement appearing in her worn face; “it is a friend of ours in England:  he has been charged by the Society with some duty that will cost him his life; we have come to intercede for him—­to ask you to save him.  For the sake of old times, Stefan—­”

“Wait a moment,” said the other, looking grave.  “Do you mean the Englishman?”

“Yes, yes; the same.”

“And who has told you what it is purposed to have done?” he asked, with quite a change in his manner.

“No one,” she answered, eagerly; “we guess that it is something of great danger.”

“And if that is so, are you unfamiliar with persons having to incur danger?  Why not an Englishman as well as another?  This is an extraordinary freak of yours, Natalie; I cannot understand it.  And to have come so far when any one in England—­any one of us, I mean—­could have told you it was useless.”