they had brought on themselves, and not unwilling to wait to see Alvan
till he was cool. His vanity, when threatening to bleed to the death,
would not be civil to the surgeon before the second or third dressing of
his wound.




CHAPTER XVIII

In the house of the Rudigers there was commotion. Clotilde sat apart
from it, locked in her chamber. She had performed her crowning act of
obedience to her father by declining the interview with Alvan, and as a
consequence she was full of grovelling revolt.

Two things had helped her to carry out her engagement to submit in this
final instance of dutifulness--one was the sight of that hateful rigid
face and glacier eye of Tresten; the other was the loophole she left for
subsequent insurgency by engaging to write to Count Hollinger's envoy,
Dr. Storchel. She had gazed most earnestly at him, that he might not
mistake her meaning, and the little man's pair of spectacles had, she
fancied, been dim. He was touched. Here was a friend! Here was the
friend she required, the external aid, the fresh evasion, the link with
Alvan! Now to write to him to bind him to his beautiful human emotion.
By contrast with the treacherous Tresten, whose iciness roused her to
defiance, the nervous little advocate seemed an emissary of the skies,
and she invoked her treasure-stores of the craven's craftiness in revolt
to compose a letter that should move him, melt the good angel to espouse
her cause. He was to be taught to understand--nay, angelically he would
understand at once--why she had behaved apparently so contradictorily.