"I have not thanked you," she said. "I see who has done all this: do you think a stranger would know to have the white-rose scent for me that Natalie uses? She was right: you are kind—you think of others."
"It is nothing—it is nothing," he said, hastily, and with all an Englishman's embarrassment.
"My dear friend," said his companion, with a grave kindness in her tone, and a look of affectionate interest in her eyes, "I am going to prove my gratitude to you. I am going to prevent—what do you call it?—a lover's quarrel."
He started.
"Yesterday," she continued, still regarding him in that kindly way, "before we left your rooms, Natalushka was very reserved toward you; was it not so? I perceived it; and you?"
"I—I thought she was tired," he stammered.
"To-morrow you are to fetch her here; and what if you find her still more reserved—even cold toward you? You will be pained, perhaps alarmed. Ah, my dear friend, life is made very bitter sometimes by mistakes; so it is that I must tell you the reason. The child loves you; be sure of that. Yes; but she thinks that she has been too frank in saying so—in time of trouble and anxiety; and now—now that you are perhaps not going to America—now that perhaps all the trouble is over—now she is beginning to think she ought to be a little more discreet, as other young ladies are. The child means no harm, but you and she must not quarrel."
He took her hand to bid her good-bye.
"Natalie and I are not likely to quarrel," said he, cheerfully. "Now I am going away. If I stayed, you would do nothing but talk about her, whereas it is necessary that you should have some dinner, then read one of these books for an hour or so, then go to bed and have a long, sound night's rest. You must be looking your brightest when she comes to see you to-morrow."
And indeed, as it turned out subsequently, this warning; of