“I say,” went on her mother, “that I have done all in my power to turn them back. _I_ have not led them on to their ruin. _I_ have not made myself disagreeable to my own family, and pleasant to them, that I might induce them to attach themselves to my company. When they get into trouble--into danger,” raising her voice as Nadia rose hurriedly and left the room, “their blood will not be on _my_ head.” “How you women hate one another!” laughed the O’Malachy, softly. Louis O’Malachy arrived the next day, a dark-browed, taciturn, broad-shouldered young man, about a year older than Nadia, moving with a peculiar stiffness, as though his movements had always been restrained by a tight uniform, or by the orders of a drill-sergeant. He took a great fancy to Cyril,--at least, his mother said that he had done so, and it was quite true that he lost no opportunity of seeking his company. Indeed, the brothers found it almost impossible to escape from him, for whenever they went out, he invariably made his appearance, and offered himself as their companion. This being the case, Madame O’Malachy, out of compassion for Caerleon, who found himself, as she phrased it, the unwelcome third in this devoted comradeship, fell into the habit of ordering Nadia to accompany her brother on all these occasions. To Caerleon himself she observed, with a cold-blooded frankness which reminded him of her daughter’s first interview with him, that to no one but an Englishman would she think of permitting the privilege of escorting Mdlle. O’Malachy in her walks, but she understood that in England it was only when young people were not allowed to meet freely that there was any fear that complications might arise. She made this remark in Nadia’s hearing, and the girl, who had resisted the proposal strenuously in private, yielded in sheer terror as to what her mother might proceed to say to Caerleon if she still hung back. She knew perfectly well that he divined her reason for coming, and pitied her for it, and the realisation plunged her into the depths of confusion and shame, sensations which were quite new to her. That she, who in her Scythian home had looked the whole world in the face, without a particle of fear, should now be trembling lest this Englishman, almost a stranger, should lay his finger on a quivering wound, made her abjectly miserable. It needed all Caerleon’s tact, all his careful insistence on the _rôle_ of friendly critic which he had adopted when they first met, to re-establish matters on a footing of any confidence between them. He succeeded in appearing so unconscious of anything wrong that she persuaded herself at last that he had not perceived the implication conveyed in her mother’s words, and after this she was at ease with him again, and they discussed social and political problems, illustrated from the experience of each, to their hearts’ content, while Cyril and Louis luxuriated in Balkan politics. Cyril was deeply