"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."
"Well, you know," said Lord Evelyn, "Lind has a great organization to control, and he must be a strict disciplinarian. It is the object of his life; everything else is of minor importance. Even you confess that you admire his tremendous power of work."