Clotilde had not to learn it from her father; but now
she saw the filthy rag that standard of female independence was--that
petticoated Unfeminine, fouler than masculine! Alvan preferred the
lichen-draped tree to the sunny flower, it was evident, for never a
letter from Alvan had come to her. She thought in wrath, nothing but the
thoughts of wrath, and ran her wits through every reasonable reflection
like a lighted brand that flings its colour, if not fire, upon
surrounding images. Contempt of the square-jawed withered woman was too
great for Clotilde to have a sensation of her driving jealousy until
painful glimpses of the man made jealousy so sharp that she flew for
refuge to contempt of the pair. That beldam had him back: she had him
fast. Oh! let her keep him! Was he to be regretted who could make that
choice?
Her father did not let the occasion slip to speak insistingly as the
world opined of Alvan and his baroness. He forced her to swallow the
calumny, and draw away with her family against herself through strong
disgust.
Out of a state of fire Clotilde passed into solid frigidity. She had
neither a throb nor a passion. Wishing seemed to her senseless as life
was. She could hear without a thrill of her frame that Alvan was in the
city, without a question whether it was true. He had not written, and he
had handed her over to the baroness! She did not ask herself how it
was that she had no letter from him, being afraid to think about it,
because, if a letter had been withheld by her father, it was a part of
her whipping; if none had been written, there was nothing to hope for.
Her recent humiliation condemned him by the voice of her sufferings for
his failure to be giant, eagle, angel, or any of the prodigious things
he had taught her to expect; and as he had thus deceived her, the
glorious lover she had imaged in her mind was put aside with some of the
angry disdain she bestowed upon the woman by whom she had been wounded.
He ceased to be a visioned Alvan, and became an obscurity; her principal
sentiment in relation to him was, that he threatened her peace. But for
him she would never have been taught to hate her parents; she would have
enjoyed the quiet domestic evenings with her people, when Marko sang,
and her sisters knitted, and the betrothed sister wore a look very
enviable in the abstract; she would be seeing a future instead of a
black iron gate! But for him she certainly would never have had, that
lette
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