t be baffled without smiting the world on the
face. And he might suffer for it; the Rudigers would suffer likewise.

She considered them very foolish people. Her survey of the little
nobility beneath her station had previously enabled her to account for
their disgust of such a suitor as Alvan, and maintain that they would
oppose him tooth and nail. Owing to his recent success, the anticipation
of a peaceful surrender to him seemed now on the whole to carry most
weight. This girl gives Alvan her hand and her family repudiate her.
Volatile, flippant, shallow as she is, she must have had some turn for
him; a physical spell was on her once, and it will be renewed when they
meet. It sometimes inspires a semblance of courage; she may determine;
she may be stedfast long enough for him to take his measures to bear her
away. And the Brocken witches congratulate him on his prize!

Almost better would it be, she thought, that circumstance should thwart
him and kindle his own demon element.

The forenoon, the noon, the afternoon, went round.

Late in the evening her door was flung wide for Colonel von Tresten.

She looked her interrogative 'Well?' His features were not used to betray
the course of events.

'How has it gone?' she said.

He replied: 'As I told you. I fancied I gauged the hussy pretty closely.'

'She will not see him?'

'Not she.'

The baroness crossed her arms.

'And Alvan?'

The colonel shrugged. It was not done to tease a tremulous woman, for she
was calm. It painted the necessary consequence of the refusal: an
explosion of AEtna, and she saw it.

'Where is he now?' said she.

'At his hotel.'

'Alone?'

'Leczel is with him.'

'That looks like war.'

Tresten shrugged again. 'It might have been foreseen by everybody
concerned in the affair. The girl does not care for him one corner of an
eye! She stood up before us cool as at a dancing-lesson, swore she had
never committed herself to an oath to him, sneered at him. She positively
sneered. Her manner to me assures me without question that if he had
stood in my place she would have insulted him:

'Scarcely. She would do in his absence what she would not do under his
eyes,' remarked the baroness. 'It's decided, then?'

'Quite.'

'Will he be here to-night?'

'I think not.'

'Was she really insolent?'

'For a girl in her position, she was.'

'Did you repeat her words to him?'

'Some of them.'

'What description of insolence?'

'She