‘That seems monstrous!—­if one could be astonished by her,’ said the baroness.  ‘When is she to write?’

‘She may write:  the letter will find no receiver,’ said Tresten, significantly raising his eyebrows.  ’The legal gentleman is gone—­blown from a gun!  He’s off home.  He informed me that he should write to the General, throwing up his office, and an end to his share in the business.’

‘There was no rudeness to the poor man?’

’Dear me, no.  But imagine a quiet little advocate, very precise and silky—­you’ve had a hint of him—­and all of a sudden the client he has by the ear swells into a tremendous beast—­a combination of lion and elephant—­bellows and shakes the room, stops and stamps before him, discharging an unintelligible flood of racy vernacular punctuated in thunder.  You hear him and see him!  Alvan lost his head—­some of his hair too.  The girl is not worth a lock.  But he’s past reason.’

‘He takes it so,’ said the baroness, musing.  ’It will be the sooner over.  She never cared for him a jot.  And there’s the sting.  He has called up the whole world in an amphitheatre to see a girl laugh him to scorn.  Hard for any man to bear!—­Alvan of all men!  Why does he not come here?  He might rage at me for a day and a night, and I would rock him to sleep in the end.  However, he has done nothing?’

That was the point.  The baroness perceived it to be a serious point, and repeated the question sharply.  ‘Has he been to the house?—­no?—­writing?’

Tresten dropped a nod.

‘Not to the girl, I suppose.  To the father?’ said she.

‘He has written to the General.’

‘You should have stopped it.’

’Tell a vedette to stop cavalry.  You’re not thinking of the man.  He’s in a white frenzy.’

‘I will go to him.’

’You will do wrong.  Leave him to spout the stuff and get rid of his poison.  I remember a sister of poor Nuciotti’s going to him after he had let his men walk into a trap—­and that was through a woman:  and he was quieted; and the chief overlooked it; and two days after, Nuciotti blew his brains out.  He’d have been alive now if he had been left alone.  Furious cursing is a natural relief to some men, like women’s weeping.  He has written a savage letter to her father, sending the girl to the deuce with the name she deserves, and challengeing the General.’

‘That letter is despatched?’

‘Rudiger has it by this time.’

The baroness fixed her eyes on Tresten:  she struck her lap.  ’Alvan!  Is it he?  But the General is old, gouty, out of the lists.  There can be no fighting.  He apologized to you for his daughter’s insolence to me.  He will not fight, be sure.’

‘Perhaps not,’ Tresten said.

’As for the girl, Alvan has the fullest right to revile her:  it cannot be too widely known.  I could cry:  “What wisdom there is in men when they are mad!” We must allow it to counterbalance breaches of ordinary courtesy.  “With the name—­she deserves,” you say?