She looked her interrogative 'Well?' His features were not used to betray the course of events. 'How has it gone?' she said. He replied: 'As I told you. I fancied I gauged the hussy pretty closely.' 'She will not see him?' 'Not she.' The baroness crossed her arms. 'And Alvan?' The colonel shrugged. It was not done to tease a tremulous woman, for she was calm. It painted the necessary consequence of the refusal: an explosion of AEtna, and she saw it. 'Where is he now?' said she. 'At his hotel.' 'Alone?' 'Leczel is with him.' 'That looks like war.' Tresten shrugged again. 'It might have been foreseen by everybody concerned in the affair. The girl does not care for him one corner of an eye! She stood up before us cool as at a dancing-lesson, swore she had never committed herself to an oath to him, sneered at him. She positively sneered. Her manner to me assures me without question that if he had stood in my place she would have insulted him: 'Scarcely. She would do in his absence what she would not do under his eyes,' remarked the baroness. 'It's decided, then?' 'Quite.' 'Will he be here to-night?' 'I think not.' 'Was she really insolent?' 'For a girl in her position, she was.' 'Did you repeat her words to him?' 'Some of them.' 'What description of insolence?' 'She spoke of his vanity . . . .' 'Proceed.' 'It was more her manner to me, as the one of the two appearing as his friend. She was tolerably civil to Storchel: and the difference of behaviour must have been designed, for she not only looked at Storchel in a way to mark the difference, she addressed him rather eagerly before we turned on our heels, to tell him she would write to him, and let him have her reply in a letter. He will get some coquettish rigmarole.' 'That seems monstrous!--if one could be astonished by her,' said the baroness. 'When is she to write?' 'She may write: the letter will find no receiver,' said Tresten, significantly raising his eyebrows. 'The legal gentleman is gone--blown from a gun! He's off home. He informed me that he should write to the General, throwing up his office, and an end to his share in the business.' 'There was no rudeness to the poor man?' 'Dear me, no. But imagine a quiet little advocate, very precise and silky--you've had a hint of him--and all of a sudden the client he has by the ear swells into a tremendous beast--a combination of lion and elephant--bellows and shakes the room, stops and stamps before him, discharging an unintelligible flood of racy vernacular punctuated in thunder. You hear him and see him! Alvan lost his head--some of his hair too. The girl is not worth a lock. But he's past reason.'