His pride in his prevailingness thrilled her.  She was cooled by her despondency sufficiently to perceive where the centre of it lay, but that centre of self was magnificent; she recovered some of her enthusiasm, thinking him perhaps to be acting rightly; in any case they were united, her step was irrevocable.  Her having entered the hotel, her being in this room, certified to that.  It seemed to her while she was waiting for the carriage he had ordered that she was already half a wife.  She was not conscious of a blush.  The sprite in the young woman’s mind whispered of fire not burning when one is in the heart of it.  And undoubtedly, contemplated from the outside, this room was the heart of fire.  An impulse to fall on Alvan’s breast and bless him for his chivalrousness had to be kept under lest she should wreck the thing she praised.  Otherwise she was not ill at ease.  Alvan summoned his gaiety, all his homeliness of tone, to give her composure, and on her quitting the room she was more than ever bound to him, despite her gloomy foreboding.  A maid of her household, a middle-aged woman, gabbling of devotion to her, ran up the steps of the hotel.  Her tale was, that the General had roused the city in pursuit of his daughter; and she heard whither Clotilde was going.

Within half an hour, Clotilde was in Madame Emerly’s drawing-room relating her desperate history of love and parental tyranny, assisted by the lover whom she had introduced.  Her hostess promised shelter and exhibited sympathy.  The whole Teutonic portion of the Continent knew Alvan by reputation.  He was insurrectionally notorious in morals and menacingly in politics; but his fine air, handsome face, flowing tongue, and the signal proof of his respect for the lady of his love and deference toward her family, won her personally.  She promised the best help she could give them.  They were certainly in a romantic situation, such as few women could see and decline their aid to the lovers.

Madame Emerly proved at least her sincerity before many minutes had passed.

Chancing to look out into the street, she saw Clotilde’s mother and her betrothed sister stepping up to the house.  What was to be done?  And was the visit accidental?  She announced it, and Clotilde cried out, but Alvan cried louder:  ’Heaven-directed! and so, let me see her and speak to her—­nothing could be better.’

Madame Emerly took mute counsel of Clotilde, shaking her own head premonitorily; and then she said:  ’I think indeed it will be safer, if I am asked, to say you are not here, and I know not where you are.’

‘Yes! yes!’ Clotilde replied:  ‘Oh! do that.’

She half turned to Alvan, rigid with an entreaty that hung on his coming voice.

‘No!’ said Alvan, shocked in both pride and vanity.  ’Plain-dealing; no subterfuge!  Begin with foul falsehood?  No.  I would not have you burdened, madame, with the shadow of a conventional untruth on our account.  And when it would be bad policy? . . .  Oh, no, worse than the sin! as the honest cynic says.  We will go down to Madame von Rudiger, and she shall make acquaintance with the man who claims her daughter’s hand.’