ing but what she had done. He had frozen her. She
had good reason to know that man for her enemy. She could prove him a
traitor to Alvan. Certain though she was from the first moment of Dr.
Storchel's integrity and kindness of heart, she had stood petrified
before him, as if affected by some wicked spell. She owned she had
utterly belied herself; she protested she had been no free agent.

The future labours in her cause were thrown upon Dr. Storchel's
shoulders, but with such compliments to him on his mission from above as
emissary angels are presumed to be sensibly affected by.

The letter was long, involved, rather eloquent when she forgot herself
and wrote herself, and intentionally very feminine, after the manner of
supplicatory ladies appealing to lawyers, whom they would sway by the
feeble artlessness of a sex that must confide in their possession of a
heart, their heads being too awful.

She was directing the letter when Marko Romaris gave his name outside
her door. He was her intimate, her trustiest ally; he was aware of her
design to communicate with Dr. Storchel, and came to tell her it would
be a waste of labour. He stood there singularly pale and grave, unlike
the sprightly slave she petted on her search for a tyrant. 'Too late,'
he said, pointing to the letter she held. 'Dr. Storchel has gone.'

She could not believe it, for Storchel had informed her that he would
remain three days. Her powers of belief were more heavily taxed when
Marko said: 'Alvan has challenged your father to fight him.' With that
he turned on his heel; he had to assist in the deliberations of the
family.

She clasped her temples. The collision of ideas driven together by Alvan
and a duel--Alvan challengeing her father--Alvan, the contemner of
the senseless appeal to arms for the settlement 'of personal
disputes!--darkened her mind. She ran about the house plying all whom
she met for news and explanations; but her young brother was absent,
her sisters were ignorant, and her parents were closeted in consultation
with the gentleman. At night Marko sent her word that she might sleep
in peace, for things would soon be arranged and her father had left the
city.

She went to her solitude to study the hard riddle of her shattered
imagination of Alvan. The fragments would not suffer joining, they
assailed her in huge heaps; and she did not ask herself whether she had
ever known him, but what disruption it was that had unsettled the reason