No one blamed Alvan.

He had shown his chivalrous valour in defending her.

The baroness was not a young woman, and she was a hardbound Blue.

She had been the first to discover the prodigy, and had pruned, corrected, and published him; he was one of her political works, promising to be the most successful.

An old affair apparently; but the association of a woman's name with Alvan's, albeit the name of a veteran, roused the girl's curiosity, leading her to think his mental and magnetic powers must be of the very highest, considering his physical repulsiveness, for a woman of rank to yield him such extreme devotion.