Dressed in black to the throat, she sat and waited the arrival of her phantom friend, the baroness--that angel! who proved her goodness in consenting to be the friend of Alvan's beloved, because she was the true friend of Alvan! How cheap such a way of proving goodness, Clotilde did not consider.

She wanted it so.
The mountain heights were in dusty sunlight.

She had seen them day after day thinly lined on the dead sky, inviting thunder and doomed to sultriness.

She looked on the garden of the house, a desert under bee and butterfly.

Looking beyond the garden she perceived her father on the glaring road, and one with him, the sight of whom did not flush her cheek or spring her heart to a throb, though she pitied the poor boy: he was useless to her, utterly.
Soon her Indian Bacchus was in her room, and alone with her, and at her feet.