on him! She swept him from earth.

And she had built some of her hopes on the professor. 'False friend!'
she cried.

She wept over Alvan for having had so false a friend.

There remained no one that could be expected to intervene with a strong
arm save the baroness. The professor's emphasized approval of her
resolve to consult the wishes of her family was a shocking hypocrisy, and
Clotilde thought of the contrast to it in her letter to the baroness.
The tripping and stumbling, prettily awkward little tone of gosling
innocent new from its egg, throughout the letter, was a triumph of
candour. She repeated passages, paragraphs, of the letter, assuring
herself that such affectionately reverential prattle would have moved
her, and with the strongest desire to cast her arms about the writer: it
had been composed to be moving to a woman, to any woman. The old woman
was entreated to bestow her blessing on the young one, all in Arcadia,
and let the young one nestle to the bosom she had not an idea of robbing.
She could not have had the idea, else how could she have made the
petition? And in order to compliment a venerable dame on her pure
friendship for a gentleman, it was imperative to reject the idea.
Besides, after seeing the photograph of the baroness, common civility
insisted on the purity of her friendship. Nay, in mercy to the poor
gentleman, friendship it must be.

A letter of reply from that noble lady was due. Possibly she had
determined not to write, but to act. She was a lady of exalted birth,
a lady of the upper aristocracy, who could, if she would, bring both a
social and official pressure upon the General: and it might be in motion