'The sooner we are together after the action opens the better for our
success, my golden crest!'

'Have no misgivings, Sigismund. You have transformed me. A spark of you
is in my blood. Come. I shall send word to your hotel when you are to
appear. But you will come, you will be there, I know. I know you so
entirely.'

'As a rule, Lutetia, women know no more than half of a man even when they
have married him. At least you ought to know me. You know that if I
were to exercise my will firmly now--it would not waver if I called it
forth--I could carry you off and spare you the flutter you will have to
go through during our interlude with papa and mama.'

'I almost wish you would,' said she. She looked half imploringly, biting
her lip to correct the peeping wish.

Alvan pressed a finger on one of her dimples: 'Be brave. Flight and
defiance are our last resource. Now that I see you resolved I shun the
scandal, and we will leave it to them to insist on it, if it must be.
How can you be less than resolved after I have poured my influence into
your veins? The other day on the heights--had you consented then? Well!
it would have been very well, but not so well. We two have a future, and
are bound to make the opening chapters good sober reading, for an
example, if we can. I take you from your father's house, from your
mother's arms, from the "God speed" of your friends. That is how Alvan's
wife should be presented to the world.'

Clotilde's epistle to the baroness was composed, approved, and
despatched. To a frigid eye it read as more hypocritical than it really