and to ours, lest we scorn too much to take an interest in her. The
exposure she had done for herself, and she has not had the art to frame
her apology. The day after her meeting, with her eagle, Alvan, she saw
Prince Marko. She was gentle to him, in anticipation of his grief; she
could hardly be ungentle on account of his obsequious beauty, and when
her soft eyes and voice had thrilled him to an acute sensibility to the
blow, honourably she inflicted it.

'Marko, my friend, you know that I cannot be false; then let me tell you
I yesterday met the man who has but to lift his hand and I go to him, and
he may lead me whither he will.'

The burning eyes of her Indian Bacchus fixed on her till their brightness
moistened and flashed.

Whatever was for her happiness he bowed his head to, he said. He knew the
man.

Her duty was thus performed; she had plighted herself. For the first few
days she was in dread of meeting, seeing, or hearing of Alvan. She feared
the mention of a name that rolled the world so swiftly. Her parents had
postponed their coming, she had no reason for instant alarm; it was his
violent earnestness, his imperial self-confidence that she feared, as
nervous people shrink from cannon: and neither meeting, seeing, nor
hearing of him, she began to yearn, like the child whose curiosity is
refreshed by a desire to try again the startling thing which frightened
it. Her yearning grew, the illusion of her courage flooded back; she
hoped he would present himself to claim her, marvelled that he did not,
reproached him; she could almost have scorned him for listening to the
hesitations of the despicable girl so little resembling what she really
was--a poor untried girl, anxious only on behalf of her family to spare
them a sudden shock. Remembering her generous considerations in their
interests, she thought he should have known that the creature he called a
child would have yielded upon supplication to fly with him. Her
considerateness for him too, it struck her next, was the cause of her
seeming cowardly, and the man ought to have perceived it and put it
aside. He should have seen that she could be brave, and was a mate for
him. And if his shallow experience of her wrote her down nerveless, his
love should be doing.

Was it love? Her restoration to the belief in her possessing a decided
will whispered of high achievements she could do in proof of love, had
she the freedom of a man. She would not have listened (it