ask him, 'When will you show the courage of Michael Bestoujif?'"

Lord Evelyn glanced at her with a strange, admiring, proud look. "If she
had a brother!" What else, even with all his admiration and affection
for her, could he hope to be?

Presently they wandered back into other and lighter subjects; and Brand,
at least, did not notice how the time was flying. When Natalie Lind
rose, and asked her father whether he would have coffee sent into the
smoking-room, or have tea in the drawing-room, Brand was quite
astonished and disappointed to find it so late. He proposed they should
at once go up to the drawing-room; and this was done.

They had been speaking of musical instruments at dinner; and their host
now brought them some venerable lutes to examine--curiosities only, for
most of the metal strings were broken. Beautiful objects, however, they
were, in inlaid ivory or tortoise-shell and ebony; made, as the various
inscriptions revealed, at Bologna, or Padua, or Venice; and dating, some
of them, as far back as 1474. But in the midst of all this, Brand espied
another instrument on one of the small tables.

"Miss Lind," said he, with some surprise, "do you play the zither?"

"Oh yes, Natalie will play you something," her father said, carelessly;
and forthwith the girl sat down to the small table.

George Brand retired into a corner of the room. He was passionately fond
of zither music. He thought no more about that examination of the lutes.

"_Do you know one who can play the zither well?_" says the proverb. "_If