do; it uttered anathema on his love of her; it painted his white glow
of unreason and fierce ire at the scorn which her behaviour flung upon
every part of his character that was tenderest with him. After speaking
such things a man comes to his senses or he dies. So thought the
baroness, and she was not more than commonly curious to hear how the
Rudigers had taken the insult they had brought on themselves, and
not unwilling to wait to see Alvan till he was cool. His vanity, when
threatening to bleed to the death, would not be civil to the surgeon
before the second or third dressing of his wound.

CHAPTER XVIII

In the house of the Rudigers there was commotion. Clotilde sat apart
from it, locked in her chamber. She had performed her crowning act of
obedience to her father by declining the interview with Alvan, and as a
consequence she was full of grovelling revolt.

Two things had helped her to carry out her engagement to submit in this
final instance of dutifulness--one was the sight of that hateful rigid
face and glacier eye of Tresten; the other was the loophole she left for
subsequent insurgency by engaging to write to Count Hollinger's envoy,
Dr. Storchel. She had gazed most earnestly at him, that he might not
mistake her meaning, and the little man's pair of spectacles had, she
fancied, been dim. He was touched. Here was a friend! Here was the
friend she required, the external aid, the fresh evasion, the link with
Alvan! Now to write to him to bind him to his beautiful human emotion.
By contrast with the treacherous Tresten, whose iciness roused her to
defiance, the nervous little advocate seemed an emissary of the skies,
and she invoked her treasure-stores of the craven's craftiness in revolt
to compose a letter that should move him, melt the good angel to espouse
her cause. He was to be taught to understand--nay, angelically he would
understand at once--why she had behaved apparently so contradictorily.
Fettered, cruelly constrained by threats and wily sermons upon her duty
to her family, terrorized, a prisoner 'beside this blue lake, in sight
of the sublimest scenery of earth,' and hating his associate--hating
him, she repeated and underscored--she had belied herself; she was
willing to meet Alvan, she wished to meet him. She could open her heart
to Alvan's true friend--his only true friend. He would instantly discern
her unhappy plight. In the presence of his associate she could explain
nothing, do noth