‘Think of her age,’ said Alvan, colouring.  He named a grandmaternal date for the year of the baroness’s birth.

Her eyebrows now stood up; her contemplation of those disenchanting lineaments came to an abrupt finish.

She returned the square card to him, slowly shaking her head, still eyeing earth as her hand stretched forth the card laterally.  He could not contest the woeful verdict.

‘Twenty years back!’ he murmured, writhing.  The baroness was a woman fair to see in the days twenty years back, though Clotilde might think it incredible:  she really was once.

Clotilde resumed her doleful shaking of the head; she sighed.  He shrugged; she looked at him, and he blinked a little.  For the first time since they had come together she had a clear advantage, and as it was likely to be a rare occasion, she did not let it slip.  She sighed again.  He was wounded by her underestimate of his ancient conquest.

‘Yes—­now,’ he said, impatiently.

‘I cannot feel jealousy, I cannot feel rivalry,’ said she, sad of voice.

The humour of her tranced eyes in the shaking head provoked him to defend the baroness for her goodness of heart, her energy of brain.

Clotilde ‘tolled’ her naughty head.

‘But it is a strong face,’ she said, ’a strong face—­a strong jaw, by Lavater!  You were young—­and daringly adventurous; she was captivating in her distress.  Now she is old—­and you are friends.’

‘Friends, yes,’ Alvan replied, and praised the girl, as of course she deserved to be praised for her open mind.

‘We are friends!’ he said, dropping a deep-chested breath.  The title this girl scornfully supplied was balm to the vanity she had stung, and his burnt skin was too eager for a covering of any sort to examine the mood of the giver.  She had positively humbled him so far as with a single word to relieve him; for he had seen bristling chapters in her look at the photograph.  Yet for all the natural sensitiveness of the man’s vanity, he did not seek to bury the subject at the cost of a misconception injurious in the slightest degree to the sentiments he entertained toward the older lady as well as the younger.  ’Friends! you are right; good friends; only you should know that it is just a little—­a trifle different.  The fact is, I cannot kill the past, and I would not.  It would try me sharply to break the tie connecting us, were it possible to break it.  I am bound to her by gratitude.  She is old now; and were she twice that age, I should retain my feeling for her.  You raise your eyes, Clotilde!  Well, when I was much younger I found this lady in desperate ill-fortune, and she honoured me with her confidence.  Young man though I was, I defended her; I stopped at no measure to defend her:  against a powerful husband, remember—­the most unscrupulous of foes, who sought to rob her of every right she possessed.  And what I did then I again would do.  I was vowed