situation. It belongs to the robustness of the conqueror's mood. But
how of his opinion of her character in the fret of a baffling, a repulse,
a defeat? Supposing the circumstances not to have helped her to shine as
a heroine, while he was reduced to appear no hero to himself! Wise are
the mothers who keep vigilant personal watch over their girls, were it
only to guard them at present, from the gentleman's condescending
generosity, until he has become something more than robust in his ideas
of the sex--say, for lack of the ringing word, fraternal.

Clotilde never knew, and Alvan would have been unable to date, the origin
of the black thing flung at her in time to come--when the man was
frenzied, doubtless, but it was in his mind, and more than froth of
madness.

After the night of the ball they met beneath the sanctioning roof of the
amiable professor; and on one occasion the latter, perhaps waxing
anxious, and after bringing about the introduction of Clotilde to the
sister of Alvan, pursued his prudent measures bypassing the pair through
a demi-ceremony of betrothal. It sprang Clotilde astride nearer to
reality, both actually and in feeling; and she began to show the change
at home. A rebuff that came of the coupling of her name with Alvan's
pushed her back as far below the surface as she had ever been. She
waited for him to take the step she had again implored him not yet to
take; she feared that he would, she marvelled at his abstaining; the old
wheel revolved, as it ever does with creatures that wait for
circumstances to bring the change they cannot work for themselves; and
once more the two fell asunder. She had thoughts of the cloister. Her
venerable relative died joining her hand to Prince Marko's; she was
induced to think of marriage. An illness laid her prostrate; she
contemplated the peace of death.