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.

This was the day of Providence:  she had strung herself to do her part in it and gone through the pathos of her fatalism above stairs in her bedroom before Marko took his final farewell of her, so she could speak her ‘Heaven be with you!’ unshaken, though sadly.  Her father had returned.  To be away from him, and close to her bundle, she hurried to her chamber and awaited the catastrophe, like one expecting to be raised from the vaults.  Carriage, wheels would give her the first intimation of it.  Slow, very slow, would imply badly wounded, she thought:  dead, if the carriage stopped some steps from the house and one of the seconds of the poor boy descended to make the melancholy announcement.  She could not but apprehend the remorselessness of the decree.  Death, it would probably be!  Alvan had resolved