"Sometimes. But I will tell you all that has happened when you are having breakfast."
"I have had breakfast, child. Now I shall get through my letters, and you can tell me all that has happened afterward."
This was equivalent to a dismissal; so Natalie went up-stairs, leaving her father to go into the small study, where lay another bundle of letters for him.
Almost the first that he opened was from George Brand; and to his amazement he found, not details about progress in the North, but a simple, straightforward, respectful demand to be permitted to claim the hand of Natalie in marriage. He did not conceal the fact that this proposal had already been made to Natalie herself; he ventured to hope that it was not distasteful to her; he would also hope that her father had no objections to urge. It was surely better that the future of a young girl in her position should be provided for. As regarded by himself, Mr. Lind's acquaintance with him was no doubt but recent and comparatively slight; but if he wished any further and natural inquiry into the character of the man to whom he was asked to intrust his daughter, Lord Evelyn might be consulted as his closest friend. And a speedy answer was requested.
This letter was, on the whole, rather a calm and business-
like performance. Brand could appeal to Natalie, and that earnestly and honestly enough; he felt he could not bring himself to make any such appeal to her father. Indeed, any third person reading this letter would have taken it to be more of the nature of a formal demand, or something required by the conventionalities; a request the answer to which was not of tremendous importance, seeing that the two persons most interested had already come to an understanding.
But Mr. Lind did not look at it in that light at all. He was at first surprised; then vexed and impatient, rather than angry; then determined to put an end to this nonsense at once. If he had deemed the matter more serious, he would have sat down and considered it with his customary fore thought; but he was merely irritated.
"Beratinsky was not so mad as I took him to be, after all," he said to himself. "Fortunately, the affair has not gone too far."
He carried the open letter up-stairs, and found Natalie in the drawing-room, dusting some pieces of Venetian glass.
"Natalie," he said, with an abruptness that startled her, and in a tone of anger which was just a little bit affected—"Natalie, what is the meaning of this folly?"