‘And you know Alvan!’ cried Clotilde, catching excitement from the lady’s flush.

‘Alvan is one of my husband’s closest friends’

Clotilde put on the playful frenzy; she made show of wringing her hands:  ’Oh! happy you! you know Alvan?  And everybody is to know him except me? why?  I proclaim it unjust.  Because I am unmarried?  I’ll take a husband to-morrow morning to be entitled to meet Alvan in the evening.’

The playful frenzy is accepted in its exact innocent signification of ‘this is my pretty wilful will and way,’ and the lady responded to it cordially; for it is pleasant to have some one to show, and pleasant to assist some one eager to see:  besides, many had petitioned her for a sight of Alvan; she was used to the request.

‘You’re not obliged to wait for to-morrow,’ she said.  ’Come to one of our gatherings to-night.  Alvan will be here.’

‘You invite me?’

’Distinctly.  Pray, come.  He is sure to be here.  We have his promise, and Alvan never fails.  Was it not Frau v.  Crestow who did us the favour of our introduction?  She will bring you.’

The Frau v.  Crestow was a cousin of Clotilde’s by marriage, sentimental, but strict in her reading of the proprieties.  She saw nothing wrong in undertaking to conduct Clotilde to one of those famous gatherings of the finer souls of the city and the race; and her husband agreed to join them after the sitting of the Chamber upon a military-budget vote.  The whole plan was nicely arranged and went well.  Clotilde dressed carefully, letting her gold-locks cloud her fine forehead carelessly, with finishing touches to the negligence, for she might be challenged to take part in disputations on serious themes, and a handsome young woman who has to sustain an argument against a man does wisely when she forearms her beauties for a reserve, to carry out flanking movements if required.  The object is to beat him.

CHAPTER III

Her hostess met her at the entrance of the rooms, murmuring that Alvan was present, and was there:  a direction of a nod that any quick-witted damsel must pretend to think sufficient, so Clotilde slipped from her companion and gazed into the recess of a doorless inner room, where three gentlemen stood, backed by book cases, conversing in blue vapours of tobacco.  They were indistinct; she could see that one of them was of good stature.  One she knew; he was the master of the house, mildly Jewish.  The third was distressingly branded with the slum and gutter signs of the Ahasuerus race.  Three hats on his head could not have done it more effectively.  The vindictive caricatures of the God Pan, executed by priests of the later religion burning to hunt him out of worship in the semblance of the hairy, hoofy, snouty Evil One, were not more loathsome.  She sank on a sofa.  That the man?  Oh!  Jew, and fifty times over Jew! nothing but Jew!