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initials.

'The woman is hateful!' she said to her father; she was ready to agree
with him about the woman and Alvan. She was ashamed to have hoped
anything of the woman, and stamped down her disappointment under a
vehement indignation, that disfigured the man as well. He had put the
matter into the hands of this most detestable of women, to settle it as
she might think best! He and she!--the miserable old thing with her
ancient arts and cajoleries had lured him back! She had him fast again,
in spite of--for who could tell? perhaps by reason of her dirty habits:
she smoked dragoon cigars! All day she was emitting tobacco-smoke; it was
notorious, Clotilde had not to learn it from her father; but now she saw
the filthy rag that standard of female independence was--that petticoated
Unfeminine, fouler than masculine! Alvan preferred the lichen-draped tree
to the sunny flower, it was evident, for never a letter from Alvan had
come to her. She thought in wrath, nothing but the thoughts of wrath, and
ran her wits through every reasonable reflection like a lighted brand
that flings its colour, if not fire, upon surrounding images. Contempt of
the square-jawed withered woman was too great for Clotilde to have a
sensation of her driving jealousy until painful glimpses of the man made
jealousy so sharp that she flew for refuge to contempt of the pair. That
beldam had him back: she had him fast. Oh! let her keep him! Was he to be
regretted who could make that choice?

Her father did not let the occasion slip to speak insistingly as the
world opined of Alvan and his baroness. He forced her to swallow the
calumny, and draw away with her family against herself through strong
disgust.

Out of a state of fire Clotilde passed into solid frigidity. She had
neither a throb nor a passion. Wishing seemed to her senseless as life
was. She could hear without a thrill of her frame that Alvan was in the
city, without a question whether it was true. He had not written, and he
had handed her over to the baroness! She did not ask herself how it was
that she had no letter from him, being afraid to think about it, because,
if a letter had been withheld by her father, it was a part of her
whipping; if none had been written, there was nothing to hope for. Her
recent humiliation condemned him by the voice of her sufferings for his
failure to be giant, eagle, angel, or any of the prodigious things he had
taught her to expect; and as he had thus dece