A stir seemed to her to prognosticate a rescue and she went not unwillingly.  To be in motion, to see roadside faces, pricked her senses with some hope.  She had gained the peace she needed, and in that state her heart began to be agitated by a fresh awakening, luxurious at first rather than troublesome.  She had sunk so low that the light of Alvan seemed too distant for a positive expectation of him; but few approached her whom she did not fancy under strange disguises:  the gentlemen were servants, the blouses were gentlemen; she looked wistfully at old women bearing baskets, for the forbidden fruit to peep out in the form of an envelope.  All passed her blankly, noticing her eyes.

The journey was short; she was taken to a place a little beyond the head of the lake, and there, though she had liberty to breathe the air, fast fixed within the walls of a daily sameness that became gradually the hum of voices accusing Alvan of one in excess of the many sins laid against him by his enemies.  Was he not possibly an empty pretender to power—­ a mere great talker?

Her bit of liberty increased her chafing at the deadly monotony of this existence, and envenomed the accusation by seeming to push her forth quite half way to meet him, if he would but come or show sign!  She impetuously vindicated him from the charge of crediting the sincerity of any words she might have committed to paper at the despotic dictation of her father.  Oh, no; Alvan could not be guilty of such folly as that; he could not; it would be to suppose him unacquainted with her, ignorant of the nature of women.  He would know that she wrote the words—­why?  She could not perfectly recollect how she had come to write them, and found it easier to extinguish the act of having written them at all, which was done by the angry recurrence to his failure to intervene now when the drama cried for his godlike appearance.  Perhaps he was really unacquainted with her thought her stronger than she was!  The idea reflected a shadow on his intelligence.  She was not in a situation that could bear of her blaming herself.

While she was thus devoured by the legions of her enfeebled wits, Clotilde was assiduously courted by her family, and her father from time to time brought pen and paper for her to write anew from his dictation.  He was pleased to hail her as his fair secretary, and when the letters were unimportant she wrote flowingly, happy to be praised.  They were occasionally addressed to friends; she discovered herself writing one to the professor, in which he was about to be informed that she had resolved to banish Alvan from her mind for ever.  She stopped; her heart stopped; the pen fell from her hand, in loathing.  Her father warily bade her proceed.  She could not; she signified it choking.  Only a few days before she had written to the professor exultingly of her engagement.  She refused to belie herself in such a manner; retrospectively her rapid contradictions