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Hawthorne, how can you be amused by such disgusting stuff?" She gazed at him inquiringly, with very blue eyes and a look of innocence, real or put on, then laughed. "I am, just. I can't tell you the how of it. Do you know Italo's sister Clotilde?" "I have not that advantage, no." "You soon will have, if you care for it, for she's coming to live with us." He stared.
Clotilde came to the table to watch her father's game. "She expects me to believe that she means it for me," said the Duke, patting his daughter's hands, and looking round at Lucien, who remained quite grave. Lucien, Monsieur d'Espard's partner, lost twenty louis. "My dear mother," said Clotilde to the Duchess, "he was so judicious as to lose."
The characters of the hosts of men are of the simple order of the comic; not many are of a stature and a complexity calling for the junction of the two Muses to name them. While for his devotees he lay still warm in the earth, that other, the woman, poor Clotilde, astonished her compatriots by passing comedy and tragic comedy with the gift of her hand to the hand which had slain Alvan.
Clotilde gave a brief account of the matter, omitting only her conversation with Frowenfeld. "Mais, oo strigue 'im?" demanded Aurora, impatiently. "Addunno!" replied the other. "Bud I does know 'e is hinnocen'!" A small scouting-party of tears reappeared on the edge of her eyes. "Innocen' from wad?" Aurora betrayed a twinkle of amusement.
"Clotilde!" Malchus exclaimed, "you here, and a captive?" "Alas! yes," the girl replied. "I was brought here three months since." "I have heard nothing of you all," Malchus said, "since your father returned with his contingent after the battle of Trasimene. We knew that Postumius with his legion was harrying Cisalpine Gaul, but no particular has reached us." "My father is slain," the girl said.
When she did not reply, but lay back, white to the lips, he rose and looked down at her. "I can see," he said, "that my touch is bitterness. I have merited nothing better. So I shall go again, but this time, if it will comfort you, I shall give you the child Clotilde not that I love her the less, but that you deserve her the more."
I am glad of it; for I don't think the baroness is likely to care much about having poor Marguerite Lacroix on her hands, though it will be the very thing for Clotilde, who must be moped to death in that dismal old chateau, without any one of her own age to associate with and no amusement of any kind, for they are as poor as church mice, and must find it hard enough to keep up even the small appearance they do make.
"This is Clotilde, daughter of Allobrigius, the chief of the Orcan tribe," Malchus replied, "and my affianced wife. Her father has been defeated and killed by Postumius, and she was carried as a slave to Rome. There good fortune and the gods threw us together, and I have managed to bring her with me."
He pointed out to her, without speaking, but with an imperious gesture, the path that wound around the rock. "Without you, then!" she said, in a gentle and proud tone. And she began ascending. Two minutes later, they reached the plateau above the cliff, and related to Clotilde the perils of their ascension, which explained sufficiently their evident agitation. At least they thought so.
By the time Bertie arrived his mother had discussed every possible and improbable conjecture as to his guilty secret; the girls limited themselves to the opinion that their brother had been weak rather than wicked. "Who is Clotilde?" was the question that confronted Bertie almost before he had got into the hall.
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