ve. 'Am I not
precise as an office clerk?' she said, with a pleasant taste of the
reality her preciseness pictured.

'Practical as the head of a State department,' said he, in good faith.

'I shall not keep you waiting,' she resumed.

'The sooner we are together after the action opens the better for our
success, my golden crest!'

'Have no misgivings, Sigismund. You have transformed me. A spark of you
is in my blood. Come. I shall send word to your hotel when you are to
appear. But you will come, you will be there, I know. I know you so
entirely.'

'As a rule, Lutetia, women know no more than half of a man even when they
have married him. At least you ought to know me. You know that if I were
to exercise my will firmly now--it would not waver if I called it
forth--I could carry you off and spare you the flutter you will have to
go through during our interlude with papa and mama.'

'I almost wish you would,' said she. She looked half imploringly, biting
her lip to correct the peeping wish.

Alvan pressed a finger on one of her dimples: 'Be brave. Flight and
defiance are our last resource. Now that I see you resolved I shun the
scandal, and we will leave it to them to insist on it, if it must be. How
can you be less than resolved after I have poured my influence into your
veins? The other day on the heights--had you consented then? Well! it
would have been very well, but not so well. We two have a future, and are
bound to make the opening chapters good sober reading, for an example, if
we can. I take you from your father's house, from your mother's arms,
from the "God speed" of your friends. That is how Alvan's wife should be
presented to the world.'

Clotilde's epistle to the baroness was composed, approved, and
despatched. To a frigid eye it read as more hypocritical than it really
was; for supposing it had to be written, the language of the natural
impulse called up to write it was necessarily in request, and that
language is easily overdone, so as to be discordant with the situation,
while it is, as the writer feels, a fairly true and well-formed
expression of the pretty impulse. But wiser is it always that the star in
the ascendant should not address the one waning. Hardly can a word be
uttered without grossly wounding. She would not do it to a younger rival:
the letter strikes on the recipient's age! She babbles of a friendship:
she plays at childish ninny! The display of her ingenuous happiness
causes fem