The humour of her tranced eyes in the shaking head provoked him to defend
the baroness for her goodness of heart, her energy of brain.

Clotilde 'tolled' her naughty head.

'But it is a strong face,' she said, 'a strong face--a strong jaw, by
Lavater! You were young--and daringly adventurous; she was captivating
in her distress. Now she is old--and you are friends.'

'Friends, yes,' Alvan replied, and praised the girl, as of course she
deserved to be praised for her open mind.

'We are friends!' he said, dropping a deep-chested breath. The title
this girl scornfully supplied was balm to the vanity she had stung, and
his burnt skin was too eager for a covering of any sort to examine the
mood of the giver. She had positively humbled him so far as with a
single word to relieve him; for he had seen bristling chapters in her
look at the photograph. Yet for all the natural sensitiveness of the
man's vanity, he did not seek to bury the subject at the cost of a
misconception injurious in the slightest degree to the sentiments he
entertained toward the older lady as well as the younger. 'Friends!
you are right; good friends; only you should know that it is just a
little--a trifle different. The fact is, I cannot kill the past, and I
would not. It would try me sharply to break the tie connecting us, were
it possible to break it. I am bound to her by gratitude. She is old
now; and were she twice that age, I should retain my feeling for her.
You raise your eyes, Clotilde! Well, when I was much younger I found
this lady in desperate ill-fortune, and she honoured me with her
confidence. Young man though I was, I defended her; I stopped at no
measure to defend her: against a powerful husband, remember--the most