morning, for he kept
appointments, and he had said he would come. She conceived that she was
independent of personal wishes on the subject of Clotilde; the fury
of his passion prohibited her forming any of the wishes we send up to
destiny when matters interesting us are in suspense, whether we have
liberated minds or not. She thought the girl would grant the interview;
was sure the creature would yield in his presence; and then there was
an end to the shining of Alvan! Supposing the other possibility, he had
shown her such fierce illuminations of eye and speech that she foresaw
it would be a blazing of the insurrectionary beacon-fires of hell
with him. He was a man of angels and devils. The former had long been
conquering, but the latter were far from extinct. His passion for this
shallow girl had consigned him to the lower host. Let him be thwarted,
his desperation would be unlikely to stop at legal barriers. His
lawyer's head would be up and armed astoundingly to oppose the law; he
would read, argue, and act with hot conviction upon the reverse of every
text of law. She beheld him storming the father's house to have out
Clotilde, reluctant or conniving; and he harangued the people, he bore
off his captive, he held her firmly as he had sworn he would; he defied
authority, he was a public rebel--he with his detected little secret
aim, which he nursed like a shamed mother of an infant, fond but afraid
to be proud of it! She had seen that he aimed at standing well with the
world and being one with it honourably: holding to his principles of
course: but a disposition that way had been perceived, and the vision
of him in open rebellion because of his shy catching at the thread of an
alliance with the decorous world, carved an ironic line on her jaw.

Full surely he would not be baffled without smiting the world on the
face. And he might suffer for it; the Rudigers would suffer likewise.

She considered them very foolish people. Her survey of the little
nobility beneath her station had previously enabled her to account for
their disgust of such a suitor as Alvan, and maintain that they would
oppose him tooth and nail. Owing to his recent success, the anticipation
of a peaceful surrender to him seemed now on the whole to carry most
weight. This girl gives Alvan her hand and her family repudiate her.
Volatile, flippant, shallow as she is, she must have had some turn for
him; a physical spell was on her once, and it will be re