She was very friendly, and very cheerful.  She did not seem at all fatigued with her travelling; on the contrary, it was probably the sea-air and the sunlight that had lent to her cheek a faint flush of color.  But at the end of dinner her father said.

“Natalushka, if we go into the drawing-room, and listen to music, after so long a day, we shall all go to sleep.  You must come into the smoking-room with us.”

“Very well, papa.”

“But, Miss Lind,” the other gentleman remonstrated, “a velvet dress—­tobacco-smoke—­”

“My dresses must take their chance,” said Miss Lind.  “I wear them to please my friends, not to please chance acquaintances who may call during the day.”

And so they retired to the little den at the end of the passage; and Natalie handed Mr. Brand a box of cigars to choose from, and got down from the rack her father’s long-stemmed, red-bowled pipe.  Then she took a seat in the corner by the fire, and listened.

The talk was all about that anarchical literature that Brand had been devouring down at Dover; and he was surprised to find how little sympathy Lind had with writing of that kind, though he had to confess that certain of the writers were personal friends of his own.  Natalie sat silent, listening intently, and staring into the fire.

At last Brand said,

“Of course, I had other books.  For example, one I see on your shelves there.”  He rose, and took down the “Songs before Sunrise.”  “Miss Lind,” he said, “I am afraid you will laugh at me; but I have been haunted with the notion that you have been teaching Lord Evelyn how to read poetry, or that he has been unconsciously imitating you.  I heard him repeat some passages from ‘The Pilgrims,’ and I was convinced he was reproducing something he had heard from you.  Well—­I am almost ashamed to ask you—­”

A touch of embarrassment appeared on the girl’s face, and she glanced at her father.

“Yes, certainly, Natalie; why not?”

“Well,” she said, lightly, “I cannot read if I am stared at.  You must remain as you are.”

She took the book from him, and passed to the other side of the room, so that she was behind them both.  There was silence for an instant or two as she turned over the leaves.

Then the silence was broken; and if Brand was instantly assured that his surmise was correct, he also knew that here was a more pathetic cadence—­a prouder ring—­than any that Lord Evelyn had thrown into the lines.  She read at random—­a passage here, a passage there—­but always it seemed to him that the voice was the voice of a herald proclaiming the new awakening of the world—­the evil terrors of the night departing—­the sunlight of liberty and right and justice beginning to shine over the sea.  And these appeals to England!