Two things had helped her to carry out her engagement to submit in this final instance of dutifulness—­one was the sight of that hateful rigid face and glacier eye of Tresten; the other was the loophole she left for subsequent insurgency by engaging to write to Count Hollinger’s envoy, Dr. Storchel.  She had gazed most earnestly at him, that he might not mistake her meaning, and the little man’s pair of spectacles had, she fancied, been dim.  He was touched.  Here was a friend!  Here was the friend she required, the external aid, the fresh evasion, the link with Alvan!  Now to write to him to bind him to his beautiful human emotion.  By contrast with the treacherous Tresten, whose iciness roused her to defiance, the nervous little advocate seemed an emissary of the skies, and she invoked her treasure-stores of the craven’s craftiness in revolt to compose a letter that should move him, melt the good angel to espouse her cause.  He was to be taught to understand—­nay, angelically he would understand at once—­why she had behaved apparently so contradictorily.  Fettered, cruelly constrained by threats and wily sermons upon her duty to her family, terrorized, a prisoner ’beside this blue lake, in sight of the sublimest scenery of earth,’ and hating his associate—­hating him, she repeated and underscored—­she had belied herself; she was willing to meet Alvan, she wished to meet him.  She could open her heart to Alvan’s true friend—­his only true friend.  He would instantly discern her unhappy plight.  In the presence of his associate she could explain nothing, do nothing but what she had done.  He had frozen her.  She had good reason to know that man for her enemy.  She could prove him a traitor to Alvan.  Certain though she was from the first moment of Dr. Storchel’s integrity and kindness of heart, she had stood petrified before him, as if affected by some wicked spell.  She owned she had utterly belied herself; she protested she had been no free agent.

The future labours in her cause were thrown upon Dr. Storchel’s shoulders, but with such compliments to him on his mission from above as emissary angels are presumed to be sensibly affected by.

The letter was long, involved, rather eloquent when she forgot herself and wrote herself, and intentionally very feminine, after the manner of supplicatory ladies appealing to lawyers, whom they would sway by the feeble artlessness of a sex that must confide in their possession of a heart, their heads being too awful.

She was directing the letter when Marko Romaris gave his name outside her door.  He was her intimate, her trustiest ally; he was aware of her design to communicate with Dr. Storchel, and came to tell her it would be a waste of labour.  He stood there singularly pale and grave, unlike the sprightly slave she petted on her search for a tyrant.  ‘Too late,’ he said, pointing to the letter she held.  ‘Dr. Storchel has gone.’

She could not believe it, for Storchel had informed her that he would remain three days.  Her powers of belief were more heavily taxed when Marko said:  ‘Alvan has challenged your father to fight him.’  With that he turned on his heel; he had to assist in the deliberations of the family.