The colonel bowed stiffly.

It would have comforted her to have been allowed to say: 'I cease to be
the rival of that execrable harridan!'

The delivery of so formidable a cat-screech not being possible, she stood
in an attitude of mild resignation, revolving thoughts of her father's
praises of his noble daughter, her mother's kiss, the caresses of her
sisters, and the dark bright eyes of Marko, the peace of the domestic
circle. This was her happiness! And still there was time, still hope
for Alvan to descend and cut the knot. She conceived it slowly, with
some flush of the brain like a remainder of fever, but no throbs of her
pulses. She had been swayed to act against him by tales which in her
heart she did not credit exactly, therefore did not take within herself,
though she let them influence her by the goad of her fears and angers;
and these she could conjure up at will for the defence of her conduct,
aware of their shallowness, and all the while trusting him to come in the
end and hear her reproaches for his delay. He seemed to her now to have
the character of a storm outside a household wrapped in comfortable
monotony. Her natural spiritedness detested the monotony, her craven
soul fawned for the comfort. After her many recent whippings the comfort
was immensely desireable, but a glance at the monotony gave it the look
of a burial, and standing in her attitude of resignation under Colonel
von Tresten's hard military stare she could have shrieked for Alvan to
come, knowing that she would have cowered and trembled at the scene
following his appearance. Yet she would have gone to him; without any
doubt his presence and the sense of his greater power declared by his
coming would have lifted her over to him. The part of her nature adoring
storminess wanted only a present champion to outweigh the other part
which cuddled security. Colonel von Tresten, however, was very far from