counsel can be saner
than that the heart should be bidden to speak out in plain verbal speech
within us. For want of it, Clotilde's short explorations in Dot-and-Dash
land were of a kind to terrify her, and yet they seemed not only
unavoidable, but foreshadowing of the unavoidable to come. Or
possibly--the thought came to her--Alvan would keep his word, and save
her from worse by stepping to the altar between her and Marko, there
calling on her to decide and quit the prince; and his presence would
breathe courage into her to go to him. It set her looking to the altar
as a prospect of deliverance.

Her mother could not fail to notice a change in Clotilde's wintry face
now that Marko was among them; her inference tallied with his report of
their interview, so she supposed the girl to have accepted more or less
heartily Marko's forgiveness. For him the girl's eyes were soft and kind;
her gaze was through the eyelashes, as one seeing a dream on a far
horizon. Marko spoke of her cheerfully, and was happy to call her his
own, but would not have her troubled by any ceremonial talk of their
engagement, so she had much to thank him for, and her consciousness of
the signal instance of ingratitude lying ahead in the darkness, like a
house mined beneath the smiling slumberer, made her eager to show the
real gratefulness and tenderness of her feelings. This had the appearance
of renewed affection; consequently her parents lost much of their fear of
the besieger outside, and she was removed to the city. Two parties were
in the city, one favouring Alvan, and one abhorring the audacious Jew.
Together they managed to spread incredible reports of his doings, which
required little exaggeration to convince an enemy that he was a man with
whom hostility could not be left to sleep. The General heard of the man's
pleading his cause in all directions to get pressure put upon him,
showing something like a devilish persuasiveness, Jew and demagogue
though he was; for there seemed to be a feeling abroad that the interview
this howling lover claimed with Clotilde ought to be granted. The latest
report spoke of him as off to the General's Court for an audience of his
official chief. General von Rudiger looked to his defences, and he had
sufficient penetration to see that the weakest point of them might be a
submissive daughter.

A letter to Clotilde from the baroness was brought to the house by a
messenger. The General thought over it. The letter