he had felt herself to be friendless. Then
this young man had come to her; and though she had said to him all
the hard things of which she could think because of his coming,
yet--yet--yet she liked him because he had come. Was any other young
man in Nuremberg so handsome? Would any other young man have taken
that leap, or have gone through the river, that he might speak
one word to her, even though he were to have nothing in return
for the word so spoken? He had asked her to love him, and she had
refused;--of course she had refused;--of course he had known that she
would refuse. She would sooner have died than have told him that she
loved him. But she thought she did love him--a little. She did not so
love him but what she would give him up,--but what she would swear
never to set eyes upon him again, if, as part of such an agreement,
she might be set free from Peter Steinmarc's solicitations. That was
a matter of course, because, without reference to Peter, she quite
acknowledged that she was not free to have a lover of her own choice,
without her aunt's consent. To give up Ludovic would be a duty,--a
duty which she thought she could perform. But she would not perform
it unless as part of a compact. No; let them look to it. If duty was
expected from her, let duty be done to her. Then she sat thinking,
and as she thought she kissed her own hand where Ludovic had kissed
it.

The object of her thoughts was this;--what should she do now, when
her aunt came home? Were she at once to tell her aunt all that had
occurred, that comparison which she had made between herself and
the Heisse girls, so much to her own disfavour, would not be a true
comparison. In that case she would have received no clandestine young
man. It could not be imputed to her as a fault,--at any rate not
imputed by the justice of heaven,--that Ludovic Valcarm had jumped
out of a boat and got in at the window. She could put herself right,
at any rate, before any just tribunal, simply by telling the story
truly and immediately. "Aunt Charlotte, Ludovic Valcarm has been
here. He jumped out of a boat, and got in at the window, and followed
me into the kitchen, and kissed my hand, and swore he loved me, and
then he scrambled back through the river. I couldn't help it;--and
now you know all about it." The telling of such a tale as that would,
she thought, be the only way of making herself quite right before
a just tribunal. But she felt, as she tried the telling