Once in his good keeping, her lord would answer for her.

And this was a manfully generous view of the situation.

It belongs to the robustness of the conqueror's mood.

But how of his opinion of her character in the fret of a baffling, a repulse, a defeat?
Supposing the circumstances not to have helped her to shine as a heroine, while he was reduced to appear no hero to himself! Wise are the mothers who keep vigilant personal watch over their girls, were it only to guard them at present, from the gentleman's condescending generosity, until he has become something more than robust in his ideas of the sex--say, for lack of the ringing word, fraternal.
Clotilde never knew, and Alvan would have been unable to date, the origin of the black thing flung at her in time to come--when the man was frenzied, doubtless, but it was in his mind, and more than froth of madness.
After the night of the ball they met beneath the sanctioning roof of the amiable professor; and on one occasion the latter, perhaps waxing anxious, and after bringing about the introduction of Clotilde to the sister of Alvan, pursued his prudent measures bypassing the pair through a demi-ceremony of betrothal.

It sprang Clotilde astride nearer to reality, both actually and in feeling; and she began to show the change at home.