But, if he had no fear, he had a superabundance of doubt.  He had not all the pliable, receptive, imaginative nature of his friend, Lord Evelyn.  He had more than the ordinary Englishman’s distrust of secrecy.  He was not to be won over by the visions of a St. Simon, the eloquence of a Fourier, the epigrams of a Proudhon:  these were to him but intellectual playthings, of no practical value.  It was, doubtless, a novelty for a young man brought up as Lord Evelyn had been to associate with a gin-drinking Irish reporter, and to regard him as the mysterious apostle of a new creed; Brand only saw in O’Halloran a light-headed, imaginative, talkative person, as safe to trust to for guidance as a will-o’-the-wisp.  It is true that for the time being he had been thrilled by the passionate fervor of Natalie Lind’s singing; and many a time since he could have fancied that he heard in the stillness of the night that pathetic and vibrating appeal—­

    “When, when will the Lord cry, ‘Revenge, it is mine?’”

But he dissociated her from her father’s schemes altogether.  No doubt she was moved by the generous enthusiasm of a young girl.  She had a warm, human, sympathetic heart; the cry of the poor and the suffering appealed to her; and she was confident in the success of projects of which she had been prudently kept ignorant.  This was George Brand’s reading.  He would not have Natalie Lind associated with Leicester Square and a lot of garlic-eating revolutionaries.

“But who is this man Lind?” he asked, impatiently, of Lord Evelyn.  He had driven up to his friend’s house in Clarges Street, had had luncheon with him, and they were now smoking a cigarette in the library.

“You mean his nationality?” said his friend, laughing.  “That has puzzled me, too.  He seems, at all events, to have had his finger in a good many pies.  He escaped into Turkey with Bem, I know:  and he has been imprisoned in Russia; and once or twice I have heard him refer to the amnesty that was proclaimed when Louis Napoleon was presented with an heir.  But whether he is Pole, or Jew, or Slav, there is no doubt about his daughter being a thorough Hungarian.”

“Not the least,” said Brand, with decision.  “I have seen lots of women of that type in Pesth, and in Vienna, too:  if you are walking in the Prater you can always tell the Hungarian women as they drive past.  But you rarely see one as beautiful as she is.”

After awhile Lord Evelyn said,

“This is Natalie’s birthday.  By-and-by I am going along to Bond Street to buy some little thing for her.”

“Then she allows you to make her presents?” Brand said, somewhat coldly.

“She and I are like brother and sister now,” said the pale, deformed lad, without hesitation.  “If I were ill, I think she would be glad to come and look after me.”

“You have already plenty of sisters who would do that.’”

“By-the-way, they are coming to town next week with my mother.  You must come and dine with us some night, if you are not afraid to face the chatter of such a lot of girls.”