For some seconds after she left the room there was perfect silence. Walpole tried to catch Nina’s eye before he spoke, but she continued steadily to look down, and did not once raise her lids.
‘Is she not very nice--is she not very beautiful?’ asked she, in a low voice.
And he drew his chair closer to her, and tried to take her hand, but she withdrew it quickly, and moved slightly away.
‘If you knew the delight it is to me to see you again, Nina--well, Mademoiselle Kostalergi. Must it be Mademoiselle?’
‘I don’t remember it was ever “Nina,”’ said she coldly.
‘Perhaps only in my thoughts. To my heart, I can swear, you were Nina. But tell me how you came here, and when, and for how long, for I want to know all. Speak to me, I beseech you. She’ll be back in a moment, and when shall I have another instant alone with you like this? Tell me how you came amongst them, and are they really all rebels?’
Kate entered at the instant, saying, ‘I can’t find it, but I’ll have a good search to-morrow, for I know it’s there.’
‘Do, by all means, Kate, for Mr. Walpole is very anxious to learn if he be admitted legitimately into this brotherhood--whatever it be; he has just asked me if we were really all rebels here.’
‘I trust he does not suppose I would deceive him,’ said Kate gravely. ‘And when he hears you sing “The blackened hearth--the fallen roof,” he’ll not question _you_, Nina.--Do you know that song, Mr. Walpole?’
‘Won’t it be so nice,’ said she, ‘to catch a fresh ingenuous Saxon wandering innocently over the Bog of Allen, and send him back to his friends a Fenian!’
‘Make me what you please, but don’t send me away.’
‘Tell me, really, what would you do if we made you take the oath?’
‘Betray you, of course, the moment I got up to Dublin.’
Nina’s eyes flashed angrily, as though such jesting was an offence.
‘No, no, the shame of such treason would be intolerable; but you’d go your way and behave as though you never saw us.’
‘Oh, he could do that without the inducement of a perjury,’ said Nina, in Italian; and then added aloud, ‘Let’s go and make some music. Mr. Walpole sings charmingly, Kate, and is very obliging about it--at least he used to be.’
[Illustration: ‘How that song makes me wish we were back again where I heard it first’]