CHAPTER VI

Alvan was at his writing-table doing stout gladiator's work on paper in
a chamber of one of the gaunt hotels of the heights, which are Death's
Heads there in Winter and have the tongues in Summer, when a Swiss lad
entered with a round grin to tell him that a lady on horseback below had
asked for him--Dr. Alvan. Who could the lady be? He thought of too
many. The thought of Clotilde was dismissed in its dimness. Issuing and
beholding her, his face became illuminated as by a stroke of sunlight.

'Clotilde! by all the holiest!'

She smiled demurely, and they greeted.

She admired the look of rich pleasure shining through surprise in him.
Her heart thanked him for appearing so handsome before her friends.

'I was writing,' said he. 'Guess to whom?--I had just finished my
political stuff, and fell on a letter to the professor and another for
an immediate introduction to your father.'

'True?'

'The truth, as you shall see. So, you have come, you have found me!
This time if I let you slip, may I be stamped slack-fingered!'

'"Two wishes make a will," you say.'

He answered her with one of his bursts of brightness.