"I ask your pardon, monsieur. I ask your pardon beforehand. I am about to be impertinent; it is necessary. If you will tell me some things, I will tell you some things which it may be better for you to know. First, then, I assume that you wish to marry that dear child, that beautiful young lady up-stairs."
"My good friend, you are a little bit too outrageous," said Brand.
"Ah! Then I must begin. You know, perhaps, that the mother of this young lady is alive?"
"Alive!"
"I perceive you do not know," said Calabressa, coolly. "I thought you would know—I thought you would guess. A child might guess. She told me you had seen the locket—Natalie to Natalushka—was not that enough?"
"If Miss Lind herself did not guess that her mother was alive, how should I?"
"If you have been brought up for sixteen or eighteen years to mourn one as dead, you do not quickly imagine that he or she is not dead: you perceive?"
"Well, it is extraordinary enough," said Brand, thoughtfully. "With such a daughter, if she has the heart of a mother at all, how could she remain away from her for sixteen years?"
A thought struck him, and his forehead colored quickly.
"There was no disgrace?"