imploring her to yield:--if she married Alvan, what could be their
prospects as the sisters-in law of such a man?--her betrothed sister
Lotte could not hope to espouse Count Walburg: Alvan's name was infamous
in society; their house would be a lazar-house, they would be condemned
to seclusion. A favourite brother followed, with sympathy that set her
tears running again, and arguments she could not answer: how could he
hold up his head in his regiment as the relative of the scandalous Jew
democrat? He would have to leave the service, or be duelling with his
brother officers every other day of his life, for rightly or wrongly
Alvan was abhorred, and his connection would be fatal to them all,
perhaps to her father's military and diplomatic career principally: the
head of their house would be ruined. She was compelled to weep again by
having no other reply. The tears were now mixed drops of pity for her
absent lover and her family; she was already disunited from him when she
shed them, feeling that she was dry rock to herself, heartless as many
bosoms drained of self-pity will become.

Incapable of that any further, she leaned still in that direction and had
a languid willingness to gain outward comfort. To be caressed a little
by her own kindred before she ceased to live was desireable after her
heavy scourging. She wished for the touches of affection, knowing them
to be selfish, but her love of life and hard view of its reality made
them seem a soft reminder of what life had been. Alvan had gone. Her
natural blankness of imagination read his absence as an entire
relinquishment; it knelled in a vacant chamber. He had gone; he had
committed an irretrievable error, he had given up a fight of his own vain
provoking, that was too severe for him: he was not the lover he fancied
himself, or not the lord of men she had fancied him. Her excessive
misery would not suffer a picture of him, not one clear recollection of
him, to stand before her. He who should have been at hand, had gone, and