d be expected to intervene with a strong
arm save the baroness. The professor's emphasized approval of her resolve
to consult the wishes of her family was a shocking hypocrisy, and
Clotilde thought of the contrast to it in her letter to the baroness. The
tripping and stumbling, prettily awkward little tone of gosling innocent
new from its egg, throughout the letter, was a triumph of candour. She
repeated passages, paragraphs, of the letter, assuring herself that such
affectionately reverential prattle would have moved her, and with the
strongest desire to cast her arms about the writer: it had been composed
to be moving to a woman, to any woman. The old woman was entreated to
bestow her blessing on the young one, all in Arcadia, and let the young
one nestle to the bosom she had not an idea of robbing. She could not
have had the idea, else how could she have made the petition? And in
order to compliment a venerable dame on her pure friendship for a
gentleman, it was imperative to reject the idea. Besides, after seeing
the photograph of the baroness, common civility insisted on the purity of
her friendship. Nay, in mercy to the poor gentleman, friendship it must
be.

A letter of reply from that noble lady was due. Possibly she had
determined not to write, but to act. She was a lady of exalted birth, a
lady of the upper aristocracy, who could, if she would, bring both a
social and official pressure upon the General: and it might be in motion
now behind the scenes, Clotilde laid hold of her phantom baroness, almost
happy under the phantom's whisper that she need not despair. 'You have
been a little weak,' the phantom said to her, and she acquiesced with a
soft sniffle, adding: 'But, dearest, honoured lady, you are a woman, and
know what our trials are when we are so persecuted. O that I had your
beautiful sedateness! I do admire it, madam. I wish I could imitate.' She
carried her dramatic ingenuousness farthel still by saying: 'I have seen
your photograph'; implying that the inimitable, the much coveted air of
composure breathed out of yonder presentment of her features. 'For I
can't call you good looking,' she said within herself, for the
satisfaction of her sense of candour, of her sense of contrast as well.
And shutting her eyes, she thought of the horrid penitent a harsh-faced
woman in confession must be:

The picture sent her swimmingly to the confessional, where sat a man with
his head in a hood, and he soon heard en