The silence of him encouraged her head to rise.  She stared about:  his phantom seemed present, and for a time she beheld him both upright in life and stretched in death.  It could not be her fault that he should die! it was the fatality.  How strange it was!  Providence, after bitterly misusing her, offered this reparation through the death of Marko.

Possibly she ought to run out and beseech Alvan to spare the innocent youth.  She stood up trembling on her legs.  She called to Alvan.  ’Do not put blood between us.  Oh!  I love you more than ever.  Why did you let that horrible man you take for a friend come here?  I hate him, and cannot feel my love of you when I see him.  He chills me to the bone.  He made me say the reverse of what was in my heart.  But spare poor Marko!  You have no cause for jealousy.  You would be above it, if you had.  Do not aim; fire in the air.  Do not let me kiss that hand and think . . .’

She sank to her chair, exclaiming:  ‘I am a prisoner!’ She could not walk two steps; she was imprisoned by the interdict of the house and the paralysis of her limbs.  Providence decreed that she must abide the result.  Dread Power!  To be dragged to her happiness through a river of blood was indeed dreadful, but the devotional sense of reliance upon hidden wisdom in the direction of human affairs when it appears considerate of our wishes, inspirited her to be ready for what Providence was about to do, mysterious in its beneficence that it was!  It is the dark goddess Fortune to the craven.  The craven with desires will offer up bloody sacrifices to it submissively.  The craven, with desires expecting to be blest, is a zealot of the faith which ascribes the direction of events to the outer world.  Her soul was in full song to that contriving agency, and she with the paralyzed limbs became practically active, darting here and there over the room, burning letters, packing a portable bundle of clothes, in preparation for the domestic confusion of the morrow when the body of Marko would be driven to their door, and amid the wailing and the hubbub she would escape unnoticed to Alvan, Providence-guided!  Out of the house would then signify assuredly to Alvan’s arms.

The prospect might have seemed too heavenly to be realizable had she not been sensible of paying heavily for it; and thus, as he would wish to be, was Marko of double service to her; for she was truly fond of the beautiful and chivalrous youth, and far from wishing to lose him.  His blood was on the heads of those who permitted him to face the danger!  She would have felt for him still more tenderly if it were permitted to a woman’s heart to enfold two men at a time.  This, it would seem, she cannot do:  she is compelled by the painful restriction sadly to consent that one of them should be swept away.

Night passed dragging and galloping.  In the very early light she thought of adding some ornaments to her bundle of necessaries.  She learnt of the object of her present faith to be provident on her own behalf, and dressed in two of certain garments which would have swollen her bundle too much.