r Lotte with the Austrian Count
Walburg; I thought it favourable for us. I spoke of you to my mother. Oh,
that scene! What she said I cannot recollect: it was a hiss. Then my
father. Your name changed his features and his voice. They treated me as
impure for mentioning it. You must have deadly enemies. I was unable to
recognize either father or mother--they have become transformed. But you
see I am here. Courage! you said; and I determined I would show it, and
be worthy of you. But I am pursued, I am sure. My father is powerful in
this place; we shall barely have time to escape.'

Alvan's resolution was taken.

'Some friend--a lady living in the city here--name her, quick!--one you
can trust,' he said, and fondled her hastily, much as a gentle kind of
drillmaster straightens a fair pupil's shoulders. 'Yes, you have shown
courage. Now it must be submission to me. You shall be no runaway bride,
but honoured at the altar. Out of this hotel is the first point. You know
some such lady?'

Clotilde tried to remonstrate and to suggest. She could have prophesied
certain evil from any evasion of the straight line of flight; she was so
sure of it because of her intuition that her courage had done its utmost
in casting her on him, and that the remainder within her would be a
drawing back. She could not get the word or even the look to encounter
his close and warm imperiousness; and, hesitating, she noticed where they
were together alone. She could not refuse the protection he offered in a
person of her own sex; and now, flushing with the thought of where they
were together alone, feminine modesty shrivelled at the idea of
entreating a man to bear her off, though feminine desperation urged to
it. She felt herself very bare of clothing, and she named a lady, a
Madame Emerly, living near the hotel. Her heart sank like a stone. 'It is
for you!' cried Alvan, keenly sensible of his loss and his generosity in
temporarily resigning her--for a subsequent triumph. 'But my wife shall
not be snatched by a thief in the night. Are you not my wife--my golden
bride? And you may give me this pledge of it, as if the vows had just
been uttered . . . and still I resign you till we speak the vows. It
shall not be said of Alvan's wife, in the days of her glory, that she ran
to her nuptials through rat-passages.'

His pride in his prevailingness thrilled her. She was cooled by her
despondency sufficiently to perceive where the centre of it lay, but th