onfusion of the
morrow when the body of Marko would be driven to their door, and amid the
wailing and the hubbub she would escape unnoticed to Alvan,
Providence-guided! Out of the house would then signify assuredly to
Alvan's arms.

The prospect might have seemed too heavenly to be realizable had she not
been sensible of paying heavily for it; and thus, as he would wish to be,
was Marko of double service to her; for she was truly fond of the
beautiful and chivalrous youth, and far from wishing to lose him. His
blood was on the heads of those who permitted him to face the danger! She
would have felt for him still more tenderly if it were permitted to a
woman's heart to enfold two men at a time. This, it would seem, she
cannot do: she is compelled by the painful restriction sadly to consent
that one of them should be swept away.

Night passed dragging and galloping. In the very early light she thought
of adding some ornaments to her bundle of necessaries. She learnt of the
object of her present faith to be provident on her own behalf, and
dressed in two of certain garments which would have swollen her bundle
too much.

This was the day of Providence: she had strung herself to do her part in
it and gone through the pathos of her fatalism above stairs in her
bedroom before Marko took his final farewell of her, so she could speak
her 'Heaven be with you!' unshaken, though sadly. Her father had
returned. To be away from him, and close to her bundle, she hurried to
her chamber and awaited the catastrophe, like one expecting to be raised
from the vaults. Carriage, wheels would give her the first intimation of
it. Slow, very slow, would imply badly wounded, she thought: dead, if the
carriage stopped some steps from the house and one of the seconds of the
poor boy descended to make the melancholy announcement. She could not but
apprehend the remorselessness of the decree. Death, it would probably be!
Alvan had resolved to sweep him off the earth. She could not blame Alvan
for his desperate passion, though pitying the victim of it. In any case
the instant of the arrival of the carriage was her opportunity marked by
the finger of Providence rendered visible, and she sat rocking her parcel
on her lap. Her love of Alvan now was mixed with an alluring terror of
him as an immediate death-dealer who stood against red-streaked heavens,
more grandly satanic in his angry mightiness than she had ever realized
that figure, and she, trembl