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.’

’Your task of two hours, then, will be accomplished, I compute, in about half a minute—­but it is on the assumption that she consents to see you alone,’ said the baroness.

Alvan opened his eyes.  He perceived in his deep sagaciousness woman at the bottom of her remark, and replied:  ’You will know Clotilde in time.  She points to me straight; but of course if you agitate the compass the needle’s all in a tremble:  and the vessel is weak, I admit, but the instinct’s positive.  To doubt it would upset my understanding.  I have had three distinct experiences of my influence over her, and each time, curiously each time exactly in proportion to my degree of resolve—­but, baroness, I tell you it was minutely in proportion to it; weighed down to the grain!—­each time did that girl respond to me with a similar degree of earnestness.  As I waned, she waned; as I heated, so did she, and from spark-heat to flame and to furnace-heat!’