‘And he cajoled Count Hollinger to send an envoy to see him righted!’ the baroness ejaculated.  ’Hollinger is not a sentimental person, I assure you, and not likely to have taken a step apparently hostile to the Rudigers, if he had not been extraordinarily shaken by Alvan.  What character of man is this Dr. Storchel?’

Tresten described Count Hollinger’s envoy, so quaintly deputed to act the part of legal umpire in a family business, as a mild man of law with no ideas or interests outside the law; spectacled, nervous, formal, a stranger to the passions; and the baroness was amused to hear of Storchel and Alvan’s placid talk together upon themes of law, succeeded by the little advocate’s bewildered fright at one of Alvan’s gentler explosions.  Tresten sketched it.  The baroness realized it, and shut her lips tight for a laugh of essential humour.

CHAPTER HIV

Late in the day Alvan was himself able to inform her that he had overcome Clotilde’s father after a struggle of hours.  The General had not consented to everything:  he had granted enough, evidently in terror of the man who had captured Count Hollinger; and it way arranged that Tresten and Storchel were to wait on Clotilde next morning, and hear from her mouth whether she yielded or not to Alvan’s request to speak with her alone before the official interview in the presence of the notary, when she was publicly to state her decision and freedom of choice, according to Count Hollinger’s amicable arrangement through his envoy.

‘She will see me-and the thing is done!’ said Alvan.  ’But I have worked for it—­I have worked!  I have been talking to-day for six hours uninterruptedly at a stretch to her father, who reminds me of a caged bear I saw at a travelling menagerie, and the beast would perform none of his evolutions for the edification of us lads till his keeper touched a particular pole, and the touch of it set him to work like the, winding of a key.  Hollinger’s name was my magic wand with the General.  I could get no sense from him, nor any acquiescence in sense, till I called up Hollinger, when the General’s alacrity was immediately that of the bear, or a little boy castigated for his share of original sin.  They have been hard at her, the whole family! and I shall want the two hours I stipulated for to the full.  What do you say?—­come, I wager I do it within one hour!  They have stockaded her pretty closely, and it will be some time before I shall get her to have a clear view of me behind her defences; but an hour’s an age with a woman.  Clotilde?  I wager I have her on her knees in half an hour!  These notions of duty, and station, and her fiddle-de-dee betrothal to that Danube osier with Indian-idol eyes, count for so much mist.  She was and is mine.  I swear to strike to her heart in ten minutes!  But, madam, if not, you may pronounce me incapable of conquering any woman, or of taking an absolute impression of facts.  I say I will do it!  I am insane if I may not judge from antecedents that my voice, my touch, my face, will draw her to me at one signal—­at a look!  I am prepared to stake my reason on her running to me before I speak a word:—­and I will not beckon.  I promise to fold my arms and simply look.’