Sunrise | Page 8

if he were himself listening--
"--Is she a queen, having great gifts to give? --Yea, these; that whoso
hath seen her shall not live Except he serve her sorrowing, with strange
pain, Travail and bloodshedding and bitterest tears; And when she bids
die he shall surely die. And he shall leave all things under the sky, And
go forth naked under sun and rain, And work and wait and watch out all
his years."
"Evelyn," said George Brand, suddenly, fixing his keen eyes on his
friend's face, "where have you heard that? Who has taught you? You
are not speaking with your own voice."
"With whose, then?" and a smile came over the pale, calm, beautiful
face, as if he had awakened out of a dream.
"That," said Brand, still regarding him, "was the voice of Natalie Lind."
CHAPTER III.
IN A HOUSE IN CURZON STREET.
Armed with a defiant scepticism, and yet conscious of an unusual
interest and expectation, George Brand drove up to Curzon Street on
the following evening. As he jumped out of his hansom, he
inadvertently glanced at the house.
"Conspiracy has not quite built us a palace as yet," he said to himself.
The door was opened by a little German maid-servant, as neat and
round and rosy as a Dresden china shepherdess, who conducted him
up-stairs and announced him at the drawing-room. It was not a large
room; but there was more of color and gilding in it than accords with
the severity of modern English taste; and it was lit irregularly with a
number of candles, each with a little green or rose-red shade. Mr. Lind
met him at the door. As they shook hands, Brand caught a glimpse of

another figure in the room--apparently that of a tall woman dressed all
in cream-white, with a bunch of scarlet geraniums in her bosom, and
another in her raven-black hair.
"Not the gay little adventuress, then?" was his instant and internal
comment. "Better contrived still. The inspired prophetess. Obviously
not the daughter of this man at all. Hired."
But when Natalie Lind came forward to receive him, he was more than
surprised; he was almost abashed. During a second or two of wonder
and involuntary admiration, he was startled out of his critical attitude
altogether. For this tall and striking figure was in reality that of a young
girl of eighteen or nineteen, who had the beautifully formed bust, the
slender waist, and the noble carriage that even young Hungarian girls
frequently have. Perhaps the face, with its intellectual forehead and the
proud and firmly cut mouth, was a trifle too calm and self-reliant for a
young girl: but all the softness of expression that was wanted, all the
gentle and gracious timidity that we associate with maidenhood, lay in
the large, and dark, and lustrous eyes. When, by accident, she turned
aside, and he saw the outline of that clear, olive-complexioned face,
only broken by the outward curve of the long black lashes, he had to
confess to himself that, adventuress or no adventuress, prophetess or no
prophetess, Natalie Lind was possessed of about the most beautiful
profile he had ever beheld, while she had the air and the bearing of a
queen.
Her father and he talked of the various trifling things of the moment;
but what he was chiefly thinking of was the singular calm and
self-possession of this young girl. When she spoke, her dark, soft eyes
regarded him without fear. Her manner was simple and natural to the
last degree; perhaps with the least touch added of maidenly reserve. He
was forced even to admire the simplicity of her dress--cream or canary
white it was, with a bit of white fur round the neck and round the tight
wrists. The only strong color was that of the scarlet geraniums which
she wore in her bosom, and in the splendid masses of her hair; and the
vertical sharp line of scarlet of her closed fan.
Once only, during this interval of waiting, did he find that calm serenity

of hers disturbed. He happened to observe the photograph of a very
handsome woman near him on the table. She told him she had had a
parcel of photographs of friends of hers just sent over from Vienna:
some of them very pretty. She went to another table, and brought over a
handful. He glanced at them only a second or two.
"I see they are mostly from Vienna: are they Austrian ladies?" he
asked.
"They live in Austria, but they are not Austrians," she answered. And
then she added, with a touch of scorn about the beautiful mouth, "Our
friends and we don't belong to the women-floggers!"
"Natalie!" her father said; but he smiled all the same.
"I will tell you one of