is carriage into a group of musical gypsies round an inn at the
arch of the chestnut avenue, after pulling up to listen to them for a
while. The music had seized him. He snatched bow and fiddle from one
of the ring, and with a few strokes kindled their faces. Then seating
himself, on a bench he laid the fiddle on his knee, and pinched the
strings and flung up his voice, not ceasing to roll out the spontaneous
notes when Clotilde and her cavalier, and other couples of the party,
came nigh; for he was on the tide of the song, warm in it, and loved
it too well to suffer intruders to break the flow, or to think of them.
They were close by when the last of it rattled (it was a popular song of
a fiery tribe) to its finish: He rose and saluted Clotilde, smiled and
jumped back to his carriage, sending a cry of adieu to the swarthy,
lank-locked, leather-hued circle, of which his dark oriental eyes and
skin of burnished walnut made him look an offshoot, but one of the
celestial branch.

He was in her father's reception-room when she reached home: he was
paying a visit of ceremony on behalf of his family to General von
Rudiger; which helped her to remember that he had been expected, and
also that his favourite colours were known to be white and scarlet. In
those very colours, strange to tell, Clotilde was dressed; Prince Marko
had recognized her by miraculous divination, he assured her he could
have staked his life on the guess as he bowed to her. Adieu to Count
Constantine. Fate had interposed the prince opportunely, we have to
suppose, for she received a strong impression of his coming straight
from her invisible guardian; and the stroke was consequently trenchant
which sent the conquering Tartar raving of her fickleness. She struck,
like fate, one blow. She discovered that the prince, in addition to his
beauty and sweet manners and gift of song, was good; she fell in love
with goodness, whereof Count Constantine was not an example: so she set
her face another way, soon discovering that there may be fragility in
goodness. And now first her imagination conceived the hero who was to
subdue her. Could Prince Marko be he, soft as he was, pliable, a docile
infant, burning to please her, enraptured in obeying?--the hero who
would wrestle with her, overcome and hold her bound? Siegfried could
not be dreamed in him, or a Siegfried's baby son-in-arms. She caught a
glorious image of the woman rejecting him and his rival, and it informed
h