in death. It could not be her fault that he should
die! it was the fatality. How strange it was! Providence, after bitterly
misusing her, offered this reparation through the death of Marko.

Possibly she ought to run out and beseech Alvan to spare the innocent
youth. She stood up trembling on her legs. She called to Alvan. 'Do not
put blood between us. Oh! I love you more than ever. Why did you let
that horrible man you take for a friend come here? I hate him, and
cannot feel my love of you when I see him. He chills me to the bone. He
made me say the reverse of what was in my heart. But spare poor Marko!
You have no cause for jealousy. You would be above it, if you had. Do
not aim; fire in the air. Do not let me kiss that hand and think...'

She sank to her chair, exclaiming: 'I am a prisoner!' She could not
walk two steps; she was imprisoned by the interdict of the house and
the paralysis of her limbs. Providence decreed that she must abide the
result. Dread Power! To be dragged to her happiness through a river of
blood was indeed dreadful, but the devotional sense of reliance
upon hidden wisdom in the direction of human affairs when it appears
considerate of our wishes, inspirited her to be ready for what
Providence was about to do, mysterious in its beneficence that it was!
It is the dark goddess Fortune to the craven. The craven with desires
will offer up bloody sacrifices to it submissively. The craven, with
desires expecting to be blest, is a zealot of the faith which ascribes
the direction of events to the outer world. Her soul was in full song
to that contriving agency, and she with the paralyzed limbs became
practically active, darting here and there over the room, burning
letters, packing a portable bundle of clothes, in preparation for the
domestic confusion of the morrow when the body of Marko would be driven
to their door, and amid the wailing and the hubbub she would escape
unnoticed to Alvan, Providence-guided! Out of the house would then
signify assuredly to Alvan's arms.

The prospect might have seemed too heavenly to be realizable had she not
been sensible of paying heavily for it; and thus, as he would wish to
be, was Marko of double service to her; for she was truly fond of the
beautiful and chivalrous youth, and far from wishing to lose him. His
blood was on the heads of those who permitted him to face the danger!
She would have felt for him still more tenderly if it were permitted to
a woman's h