For want of it, Clotilde's short explorations in Dot-and-Dash land were of a kind to terrify her, and yet they seemed not only unavoidable, but foreshadowing of the unavoidable to come.

Or possibly--the thought came to her--Alvan would keep his word, and save her from worse by stepping to the altar between her and Marko, there calling on her to decide and quit the prince; and his presence would breathe courage into her to go to him.

It set her looking to the altar as a prospect of deliverance.
Her mother could not fail to notice a change in Clotilde's wintry face now that Marko was among them; her inference tallied with his report of their interview, so she supposed the girl to have accepted more or less heartily Marko's forgiveness.

For him the girl's eyes were soft and kind; her gaze was through the eyelashes, as one seeing a dream on a far horizon.

Marko spoke of her cheerfully, and was happy to call her his own, but would not have her troubled by any ceremonial talk of their engagement, so she had much to thank him for, and her consciousness of the signal instance of ingratitude lying ahead in the darkness, like a house mined beneath the smiling slumberer, made her eager to show the real gratefulness and tenderness of her feelings.