ed death would be
welcome; and as she certainly had sense, she took it for the promise of
courage. She flattered herself by believing, therefore, that she who did
not object to die was only awaiting the cruelly-delayed advent of her
lover to be almost as brave as he--the feminine of him. With these ideas
in her head much clearer than when she wrote the couple of lines to
Alvan--for then her head was reeling, she was then beaten and
prostrate--she signed her name to a second renunciation of him, and was
aware of a flush of self-reproach at the simple suspicion of his being
deceived by it; it was an insult to his understanding. Full surely the
professor would not be deceived, and a lover with a heart to reach to her
and read her could never be hoodwinked by so palpable a piece of
slavishness. She was indeed slavish; the apology necessitated the
confession. But that promise of courage, coming of her ownership of
sense, vindicated her prospectively; she had so little of it that she
embraced it as a present possession, and she made it Alvan's task to put
it to the trial. Hence it became Alvan's offence if, owing to his
absence, she could be charged with behaving badly. Her generosity
pardoned him his inexplicable delay to appear in his might: 'But see what
your continued delay causes!' she said, and her tone was merely
sorrowful.

She had forgotten her signature to the letter to the professor when his
answer arrived. The sight of the handwriting of one of her lover's
faithfullest friends was like a peal of bells to her, and she tore the
letter open, and began to blink and spell at a strange language, taking
the frosty sentences piecemeal. He begged her to be firm in her
resolution, give up Alvan and obey her parents! This man of high
intelligence and cultivation wrote like a provincial schoolmistress
moralizing. Though he knew the depth of her passion for Alvan, and had
within the month received her lark-song of her betrothal, he, this
man--if living man he could be thought--counselled her to endeavour to
deserve the love and respect of her parents, alluded to Alvan's age and
her better birth, approved her resolve to consult the wishes of her
family, and in fine was as rank a traitor to friendship as any
chronicled. Out on him! She swept him from earth.

And she had built some of her hopes on the professor. 'False friend!' she
cried.

She wept over Alvan for having had so false a friend.

There remained no one that coul