but there was a soft golden glow prevailing all the same. For many a day
George Brand remembered that little luncheon-party; the dull, bronze
glow of the room; the flowers; the soft, downcast eyes opposite him; the
bright, pleasant garrulity of the little Polish lady; and always--ah,
the delight of it!--that strange, trembling, sweet consciousness that
Natalie Lind was listening as he listened--that almost he could have
heard the beating of her heart.

And a hundred and a hundred times he swore that, whoever throughout the
laboring and suffering world might regret that day, the man Kirski
should not.




CHAPTER XV.

NEW FRIENDS.


It was a Sunday afternoon in Hyde Park, in this pleasantly opening
summer; and there was a fair show of "the quality" come out for their
accustomed promenade, despite the few thunder-showers that had swept
across from the South. These, in fact, had but served to lay the dust,
and to bring out the scent of the hawthorns and lilacs, so that the air
was sweet with perfume; while the massive clouds, banking up in the
North, formed a purple background to show up the young green foliage of
the trees, all wet with rain, and shimmering tremulously in the
sunlight.