eart to enfold two men at a time. This, it would seem, she
cannot do: she is compelled by the painful restriction sadly to consent
that one of them should be swept away.

Night passed dragging and galloping. In the very early light she thought
of adding some ornaments to her bundle of necessaries. She learnt of
the object of her present faith to be provident on her own behalf, and
dressed in two of certain garments which would have swollen her bundle
too much.

This was the day of Providence: she had strung herself to do her part
in it and gone through the pathos of her fatalism above stairs in her
bedroom before Marko took his final farewell of her, so she could
speak her 'Heaven be with you!' unshaken, though sadly. Her father had
returned. To be away from him, and close to her bundle, she hurried to
her chamber and awaited the catastrophe, like one expecting to be raised
from the vaults. Carriage, wheels would give her the first intimation
of it. Slow, very slow, would imply badly wounded, she thought: dead, if
the carriage stopped some steps from the house and one of the seconds
of the poor boy descended to make the melancholy announcement. She could
not but apprehend the remorselessness of the decree. Death, it would
probably be! Alvan had resolved to sweep him off the earth. She could
not blame Alvan for his desperate passion, though pitying the victim
of it. In any case the instant of the arrival of the carriage was her
opportunity marked by the finger of Providence rendered visible, and she
sat rocking her parcel on her lap. Her love of Alvan now was mixed with
an alluring terror of him as an immediate death-dealer who stood against
red-streaked heavens, more grandly satanic in his angry mightiness than
she had ever realized that figure, and she, trembled and shuddered,
fearing to meet him, yearning to be taken to him, to close her eyes
on his breast in blindest happiness. She gave the very sob for the
occasion.

A carriage drove at full speed to the door. Full speed could not be the
pace for a funeral load. That was a visitor to her father on business.
She waited for fresh wheels, telling herself she would be patient and
must be ready.

Her pathos ways ready and scarcely controllable. The tear thickened
on her eyelid as she projected her mind on the grief she would soon be
undergoing for Marko: or at least she would undergo it subsequently; she
would certainly mourn for him. She dared not proceed to an accu