"Natalie," said he, gravely, "you must not even mention such a thing to her: it would pain her. Can you not see that there are sufficient reasons why she should not go, when she has not been under your father's roof for sixteen years?"
"And why has my father never told me?" the girl said, breathlessly.
"I cannot say."
She thought for a moment; but she was too excited to follow out any train of thinking.
"Ah," she said, "what matter? I have found a great treasure. And you, you shall not go: it will be we three together now. Come!"
She took his hand; she turned to her mother; her face flushed with shyness. She said something, her eyes turned to the ground, in that soft musical language he did not understand.
"I know, my child," the mother answered in French, and she laughed lightly despite her wet eyes. "Do you think one cannot see?—and I have been following you like a spy!"
"Ah, then," said the girl, in the same tongue, "do you see what lies they tell? They say when the mother comes near her child, the heart of the child knows and recognizes her. It is not true! it is not true!—or perhaps one has a colder heart than the others. You have been near to me, mother; I have watched, as you went away crying, and all I said was, 'Ah, the poor lady, I am sorry for her!' I had no more pity for you than Anneli had. Anneli used to say, 'Perhaps, fraulein, she has lost some one who resembles you.'"
"I had lost you—I had lost you," the mother said, drawing the girl toward her again. "But now I have found you again, Natalushka. I thank God for his goodness to me. I said to myself, 'If my child turns away from me, I will die!' and I thought that if you had any portrait of me, it would be taken when I was young, and you would not care for an old woman grown haggard and plain—"
"Oh, do you think it is for smooth portraits that I care?"