“For what?” She came closer.

“Wondering if you—­Ha! ha!” Mr. Heatherbloom stopped; in his confusion, his endeavor to turn the conversation from himself and Miss Dalrymple, he seemed to be getting into deep waters.

“You wondered what?” In a low tone.

Since he now felt obliged to speak, he did, coolly enough.  “If you had some ulterior motive!” he said with a quiet smile.

She it was who now started back, and her face paled slightly.  “Why?—­what ulterior motive?  What do you mean?”

He told her in plain words.  She breathed more evenly; then smiled sweetly.  She had a strange face sometimes.  “Thank you,” she said.  “You are very frank, mon ami.  I like you none the less for it.  Though you did so injure me—­in your thoughts!” Her eyes had an enigmatic light.  “Well, I must go now to Miss Dalrymple.  She is beginning to be so fond of me.”  She drawled the last words as if she liked to linger on them.  “You see I, too, have a little Russian blood in me.”  Mr. Heatherbloom looked down.  “And I think she loves to hear me tell of that wonderful country—­the white nights of St. Petersburg—­the splendid steppes—­the grandeur of our Venice of the north.  Of course, she is immensely interested in Russia now.”  Significantly.  “Its ostentation, its splendor, its barbaric picturesqueness!  But tell me, what is her prince like?  He is very handsome, naturally!  Or she would not so dote on him!”

Mr. Heatherbloom’s features had hardened; he did not answer directly.  “She likes to talk about Russia?” he said, half to himself.

Marie shrugged.  “Is it not to be her country some day?”

“No, it isn’t!” The words seemed forced from his lips; he spoke almost fiercely.  “She may live there with him, but it will never be her country.  This is her country.  She is its product; an American to her finger-tips.  And all the grand dukes and princes of the Winter Palace can’t change her.  She belongs to old California; she grew up among the orange trees and the flowers, and her heart will ever yearn for them in your frozen land of tyranny!”

“Oh! oh! oh!” said Mademoiselle Marie.  “How eloquent monsieur can be!  Quite an orator!  One would say he, too, has known this land of orange trees and flowers!”

“I?” Mr. Heatherbloom bit his lip.

But she only shook a finger.  “Oh! oh!” Altogether like a different person from his casual acquaintance of the park!  He gazed at her closer; how quickly the marks of trouble, anxiety, had faded from her face; as if they had never existed.

“What do you mean?” he asked, looking into eyes now full of a new and peculiar understanding.

“Nothing,” she said and vanished.

He gazed where she had been; he could not account for a sudden strange emotion, as if some one had trailed a shadow over him.  A premonition of something going to happen; that could not be foreseen, or averted!  Something worse than anything that had gone before!  What nonsense!  He pressed his lips tightly and went about his duties like an automaton.