Bertram Mitford (continued 4)

“Not of necessity,” rejoined Philip, eagerly. “Surely you have a right to act for a friend; and for all he knows you may be my legal adviser. I believe you must have been a lawyer once, you’re so devilish coldblooded and logical. Now, say you’ll do it.”

Fordham’s dark brows met, and he smoked silently for a few minutes. “Coldblooded—logical,” had said this careless youngster, who was merely paltering with the very outskirts of the grim web of circumstances which go to make up the tragedies—and travesties—of the serious side of life. “Coldblooded” was he now pronounced; yet could he remember when his blood ran hot, surging and seething like the boiling and bubbling pitch. Now it lay still within his veins, cool and acrid as vinegar.

“And if I don’t bring it off all right, or as you think all right, you’ll turn round and abuse me,” he said at last.

“You needn’t be in the least afraid of that,” answered Phil. “I’ll give you a free hand to act as you think right.”

“You will?”

“Of course.”

“Now you’re talking, as they say in the States. Well, Phil, I’ll do what I can for you. But mind, you must leave everything in my hands unreservedly. None of your insane scruples about ‘form,’ or anything of that kind. Do you agree to this?”

“I do, unreservedly.”

“Well, it’s dead contrary to my principles, as I told you before; but for this once I’ll throw judgment overboard, especially as it is to turn the flank of an infernal scheming, crafty female creature,” added this misogynist, an acrid ring coming into his tone. “And now, Phil, you had better not go back to the hotel. Start off from here and walk somewhere till lunch-time—if you could make it till dinner-time, all the better. By then I shall have knocked what change I can out of the exasperated but knowing British parent.”

Chapter Nineteen.

Fighting the Devil with Fire.

Philip was only too ready to follow his friend’s advice, and accordingly started away there and then—whither he did not care. His only thought was to get through the day somehow.

He had no wish to encounter old Glover again. In saying that he had had a considerable row with that worthy he had in no wise overstated matters. His marked abstention from the fair Edith’s society the previous evening had been quite sufficient, and the old man had got up with the fixed determination of having it out with the defaulting swain, and withal giving the latter a very large piece of his mind. This was all very well. But old Glover, not being a gentleman himself, did not in the very least understand how to deal with gentlemen, and his method of handling his grievance was so much that of the triumphant trickster who has bested his neighbour over a bargain that it revolted Philip, unconsciously strengthening a resolve which was forming in his mind to avoid an alliance with connections of this sort at all costs and hazards.

Now, as he made his way up the mountain path with the quick elastic step of perfect physical condition, Philip began to feel more sanguine. Fordham would get him out of the mess somehow. From where he was he could make out two figures strolling out from the hotel. He had no glasses with him, but felt sure they were Fordham and old Glover. They were at it already. Fordham was a wonderful fellow, and could do anything if he chose. It would not be surprising if he were to succeed in getting rid of the obnoxious Glovers altogether, and he—Philip—were to find the field clear again when he returned that evening. He felt quite hopeful.

Not for long, however. For he remembered there was another horn to the dilemma. He might free himself from the awkward position in which circumstances and his own thoughtlessness had combined to land him; but the new sweet relationship with Alma—ah! that was a thing of the past, and this he recognised with a keen unerring instinct hardly to be looked for in his easy-going nature. This he recognised with a despairing pang, and again his heart was heavy as lead within him.

The first person Fordham encountered on returning to the hotel was old Glover himself. The latter was seated on a pile of saw-planks stacked against a chalet, smoking the pipe of solitude and sweet and bitter fancies—probably the latter, if the expression of his countenance was aught to go by. So far from being prepared to resent his intervention, there was an eager look in the old man’s eyes as he perceived Fordham, which was by no means lost upon that astute reader of human nature.

“Er—er—Mr Fordham?” he called out, the other having passed him with a commonplace remark in re the weather.

Fordham turned with just a gleam of well-feigned astonishment in his face.

“Ar—Mr Fordham,” went on old Glover now more eagerly, “would you—ar—mind accompanying me for a short stroll? I should—ar—like to have a few words with you.”

“Certainly,” was the reply, and an additional touch was thrown into the well-feigned astonishment. “I am quite at your disposal. Doing nothing this morning. We might stroll along the level towards the head of the valley.”

The other assented with alacrity, and they started, Fordham keeping the conversation to strict commonplace until they had got clear of the clusters of châlets lining the path on either side. Then the valley opened out into wide, level meadows, and, crossing the log bridge over the swirling, rushing mountain torrent, Fordham led the way into one of these.

“Er—ar”—began old Glover, who had with difficulty restrained his eagerness up till now, “have you, may I ask, known young Orlebar for a considerable length of time?”

“A goodish while.”

“Do you—ar—considar—that you know him well—er—I may say intimately?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Er—now, Mr Fordham—you will—ar—excuse the question, I’m sure. Have you always found him—ar—straightforward?”

“Invariably. Too much so, in fact, for his own interests.”

“Ar—r!” The representative of British commerce drew himself up with a sidelong stare at his neighbour. This was a quality quite outside his comprehension. He began to suspect the other was making game of him. The expanse of waistcoat swelled, and the folds of a truly magnificent pomposity deepened around its wearer as he went on. “Ar—I am sorry I cannot agree with you, Mr—ar—Fordham—very sorry indeed. In his dealings with me—with me and mine—young Orlebar has, I regret to say, shown the—ar—very reverse of straightforwardness. Are you aware, sir, that he is engaged to my daughter?”

“I can’t say I am.”

The old man halted, turned round upon Fordham, and looked him full in the face as though he could hardly believe in his own sense of hearing.

“I—ar—beg your pardon, Mr—ar—Fordham. Did I—ar—understand you to say you were not aware of it?”

“Certainly, Mr Glover. I intended you to understand precisely that.”

Old Glover was nonplussed. He began to feel small and at a decided disadvantage, a most unwonted feeling with him. He stared wonderingly, inquiringly, distrustfully, into the dark, saturnine visage confronting him, but could read nothing there.

“It is an odd thing that Phil should not have informed me of the fact,” went on Fordham. “He is usually openness itself—indeed, too much so, as I said just now. Wears his heart on his sleeve, I always tell him. However, I shall have to congratulate him the next time I see him. By the way, I suppose his father is delighted? Philip is an only son, you know.”

Nothing could be more innocent than Fordham’s tone, nothing more unsuspecting than the look of half-amused wonder with which he received the intelligence. But his keen perception noted the disconcerted wave which passed over his interlocutor’s face at this allusion to Sir Francis Orlebar.

“Fathers have different ways of taking news of that kind,” he continued, innocently. “Now, partly as a student of character, partly by reason of some slight acquaintance with Sir Francis himself, I am curious to know how he took the news of his son’s engagement. How did he?”

The question was put with blunt and cruel directness. No slippery commercial instincts could avail here. It must be answered. Poor old Glover felt unprecedentedly small in the hands of his wily opponent. Those piercing dark eyes penetrated his poor coating of pomposity as a lance-head might penetrate the rind of a pumpkin.

“I am not aware how Sir Francis took the news,” he answered, stiffly.

“He was informed, of course?” pursued Fordham, remorselessly. “Really—ar—Mr Fordham. Your tone is—ar—very strange. I am at a loss to—ar—”

“Oh, a thousand pardons. I merely asked the question because I thought I understood you to say that Philip was engaged to your daughter. If I was mistaken—But I quite understand. Of course the affair is no business of mine. At the same time allow me to remind you, Mr Glover, that the topic was broached by yourself, and, moreover, that you requested me to accompany you for a stroll with that object. It is naturally of far greater interest to you than to me, but if it is distasteful to you, we will drop it at once. So let us talk of something more congenial.”

His manner was the perfection of ingenuous indifference. Thorough cynic as he was, Fordham was enjoying the embarrassment of this inflated old schemer, who he well knew had not brought him thus far in order to “drop the subject” at any such early stage of the conversation. And the next words proved it.

“You were not mistaken, sir. He is engaged to my daughter. And—ar—when you come to look at the matter in its right light, Mr Fordham, you will, I am sure, agree with me that he has acted with very great want of straightforwardness.”

“Perhaps. But you know, Mr Glover, Philip is an only son. It does, I confess, appear strange to me that no reference should have been made to his father at the time he asked for your consent to the engagement. He did ask for it, I suppose?”

“Hang it, sir!” blared forth the other, goaded to fury by his own helpless flounderings, which only served to entangle him deeper and deeper within the net. “Hang it, sir! You know as well as I do that in these days young people don’t trouble their heads about their fathers in matters of this kind. They take it all into their own hands—arrange it between themselves.”

The expression of astonished disapproval upon Fordham’s face as he received this announcement would have delighted the heart of the most confirmed stickler for the old-fashioned proprieties.

“Do they? I was not aware of it,” he said, “Pardon my ignorance, but I still can’t help thinking that, whatever may be the general rule, for the only son of a man of Sir Francis Orlebar’s position to be allowed to drift into a tacit engagement without consulting either the young lady’s father or his own, is—pardon me again—somewhat of an odd proceeding.”

“What is a beggarly baronet?” cried old Glover, the coarse huckstering blood showing through the veneer of a would-be stately pomposity in his blind rage at finding himself outwitted at every point. “Pooh! I could buy up a dozen of them.”

“True. I was not thinking so much, though, about what was due to a ‘beggarly baronet’ as to a gentleman and the son of a gentleman. However,” he resumed, after a pause just perceptible enough to carry that last shaft home, “let us now be frank with each other—talk as men of the world, in fact. I presume you had some object in seeking this interview with me, Mr Glover?”

Their stroll had brought them to a large rock which at some period more or less remote had fallen from above and embedded itself in the meadow. In the shade formed by this Fordham proposed that they should sit down. A beetling cliff sheered up behind to a great height, but in front and around the approaches to the place were open.

“You are right in your surmise, Mr—ar—Fordham. As an intimate friend of young Orlebar, a man, I believe, considerably older than himself, it occurred to me that you would be—ar—likely to have some influence over him—and—ar—might exert that influence towards inducing him to do what is right.”

“You may command any influence I may possess in that direction, Mr Glover,” said Fordham, suavely, though inwardly chuckling over the cool impudence of the proposal and the opacity of the mind which could propound it.

“I was sure of it—sure of it,” reiterated the other, much mollified at the prospect of so welcome an alliance. “As I said before, he is not behaving straightforwardly, and you will—ar—agree with me. Well, now, some months ago it was that he came first to my place. I’ve got a little crib down at Henley, you know, Mr Fordham—shall be happy to see you there if you are returning to England—very happy. Well, we had plenty of fun going on—parties and picnics and rowing and all that. I’m a man that likes to see young folks enjoying themselves. I don’t stint them—not I. Let them enjoy themselves when they are young, say I. Don’t you agree with me?”

“Undoubtedly,” murmured Fordham.

“Well, among other young fellows who came sparking around was this young Orlebar,” went on old Glover, forgetting his stilted pomposity in the thread of his narrative. “I was always glad to see him—ask him if I wasn’t. Soon it seemed to me that he was taking a fancy to my Edie. She’s my eldest, you know, as good a girl as ever was. She’s a pretty girl, too, and looks at home anywhere—in the Park, or wherever she may be. Now doesn’t she?”

“I quite agree with you on the subject of Miss Glover’s attractions,” said Fordham, gravely. “She would, as you say, look thoroughly at home in the Park—with a perambulator and a soldier,” he added to himself.

“All day and every day he made some excuse or other to run down. He’d take her out on the river by the hour, sit about the garden with her, be sending her flowers and things and all that. If that don’t mean intentions, I’d like to know what does. Well, I didn’t feel called upon to step in. I don’t believe in interfering with young folks’ inclinations. I liked the young fellow—we all did—and it seemed he was old enough to know his own mind. This went on for some time—some months. Then suddenly we heard he’d gone abroad, and from that day on heard no more about him by word or line. My poor Edie felt it dreadfully. She didn’t say anything at first, nor for a long time, and at last I got it all out of her. Now, that isn’t the way a girl should be treated, is it, Mr Fordham? If you had daughters of your own you would not like to see them treated like that, would you?”

“Certainly not. But pray go on—I am interested.”

He was—but in reading between the lines of this very ingenuous and pathetic tale of base and black hearted treachery. To the narrator his sympathetic tone and attitude conveyed the liveliest satisfaction, but that hoary plutocrat little guessed at what a dismally primitive hour it was requisite to rise in order to get the blind side of saturnine Richard Fordham.

“I’d taken the girls to the seaside for their summer outing,” continued the narrator—“a thing they generally go wild with delight over. But poor Edie this time said she hated the sea. She wanted to go abroad. Would I take her abroad? At first I wouldn’t, till she grew quite thin and pale. Then I knew why she wanted to go, and she told me. If she could find him out herself—make up a pleasant little surprise, she said—it would all come right. It would all be as before, and they would be as jolly as grigs. I hadn’t the heart to refuse her, and so we came. We found out where young Orlebar was, and dropped down on him with the pleasant little surprise we’d planned. But—it didn’t seem a pleasant surprise at all.”

“No, by Jove, it didn’t!” said the listener to himself, putting up his hand to hide a sardonic grin.

“You saw that it didn’t. You saw how he behaved. Didn’t seem at all glad to see us, hardly spoke to us. And that girl had been breaking her heart about him—yes, breaking her heart—and he’s never been near her since the moment she arrived. But I see how it is—he’s got another string to his bow. That high and mighty young woman that was sitting near you—Miss—what’s her name?—Miss Wyatt, isn’t it? Well—”

“Excuse me if I remind you, Mr Glover, that among ourselves it is not usual to drag ladies’ names into other people’s differences in that free-and-easy sort of fashion,” said Fordham, stiffly, though inwardly convulsed with mirth at the idea of finding himself, of all people, taking up the cudgels on behalf of one of the detested sex.

“Eh—what? Why, they told me he was engaged to her.”

“Who told you he was?”

“Why, let me see—some of the people last night. I don’t quite recollect which of them. But perhaps you can tell me for certain. Is he?”

“Not that I am aware of.”

“Not—eh?” with a very distrustful look into Fordham’s face, and in no wise convinced; for to this representative of British commerce a man was bound to be lying, provided any adequate motive existed for mendacity, and here such motive undoubtedly did exist. “Well, they told me the pair of them were never apart, out together all day, sitting together all the evening—never apart, except at bedtime.”

“Pooh! that means nothing. Here you see, and in places like this, society is a pretty happy-go-lucky assortment, and the harmonious elements gravitate towards each other. And while we are on this subject, Mr Glover, I may as well remind you that Philip is young, a great favourite with women, and consequently a devil of a fellow to flirt. He’s always over head and ears in some flirtation or other—always has been ever since I’ve known him. But he means nothing by it, and it always comes to nothing.”

“Upon my word, Mr—ar—Fordham,” replied the other, again bristling up with pomposity, “you seem to treat this matter with strange—ar—levity. Whatever—ar—you may see fit to call it, I look upon this—ar—outrageous trifling with my daughter’s feelings as the act of an unprincipled scoundrel. Yes, sir, an unprincipled scoundrel,” he added, rolling the words, in his delight at having hit upon a good, sounding, double-barrelled epithet. “But what do you want him to do?”

“Well, really—ar—Mr Fordham, that is a strange question to come from a man of your—ar—knowledge of the world. What is the usual—ar—outcome of a young man’s winning a girl’s affection?”

“I am bound in candour to reply that its nature varies. Further it might be as well to approach this matter with caution and common sense. You are doubtless aware that Sir Francis Orlebar is not a rich man—for a man in his position a decidedly poor one, and Philip has not a shilling in the world beyond what his father allows him? Now if his father should disapprove of this—er—engagement—as not having been consulted it is extremely likely he will—he may cut off that allowance summarily.”

“In that case I should be prepared to allow the people—ar—something to go on with.”

“What do you mean precisely by ‘something to go on with,’ Mr Glover?”

“Well—really now—ar—Mr Fordham. You must excuse my saying so, but you are—ar—I mean this is—”

“Taking a great liberty? I quite understand,” was the perfectly unruffled rejoinder. “But then you must remember this, Mr Glover. You broached the subject. You called me into consultation, so to say. You asked me to use my influence with Philip in this matter. I need hardly tell you I have no interest in it one way or the other. We will drop the subject altogether if you like.”

“I think you mistake me,” said the other, hurriedly. “I did not—ar—say the words you were good enough to put into my mouth.”

“Well, then, you must allow me, Mr Glover, to keep an eye upon my friend’s interests. He is very young, remember, a mere thoughtless boy. Now we, as men of the world, are bound to look at everything from a practical point of view. Let us talk plainly then. How much are you prepared to settle in the event of Philip—er—fulfilling the engagement into which you say he has entered?”

“I should be, as I said before, prepared to make them a fairly liberal allowance,” he jerked forth, with the air of a man who has just had a tooth drawn and has found the process less painful than he had expected.

But Fordham shook his head.

“The ‘allowance’ system is an unsatisfactory one,” he said. “I have known people let into queer quandaries by trusting to it. Allowances may be cut off at the mere caprice of the allower. Now, don’t be offended,” he added, with the shadow of a smile. “We agreed to speak plainly and as men of the world. No—the thing must be a settlement. Now what are you prepared to settle?”

“I think I may say this. I will settle four hundred a year upon them now. At my death of course—Why what is the matter? Is that not enough?”

The last in an astonished and indignant tone. For an almost derisive shake of the head on the part of the other had cut short his words.

“Most certainly not. It is, in fact, ridiculous.”

“Many a young couple has begun life on less.”

“And many a man has ruined his life by beginning on far more. No. I think my young friend will rate himself at a far higher value than that. Why there are shoals of women with six times that income who would jump at him.”

“And are truth and honour to go for nothing?” spluttered old Glover, swelling himself out with virtuous wrath until the expanse of the white waistcoat was so tight that you could hear the seams crack. “Truth and honour and good faith—and a sweet girl’s broken heart?” he repeated, working up a highly effective sniffle.

“My dear sir, you can’t run a household, and a milliner, and a dressmaker, and a butcher and baker, and a pocket doctor, and a lawyer—in fact, an unlimited liability, upon truth and honour; nor can you pay the Queen’s taxes with a sweet girl’s mended heart. Now, can you?”

“You have a most—ar—peculiar way of putting things, I must say, Mr Fordham. Well, I’ll tell you what I’ll do—I’ll make it five hundred. There!”

“You might just as well make it five hundred pence, Mr Glover. I can’t advise my friend to throw himself away.”

“I consider five hundred a year ample,” said old Glover, magisterially inserting his thumbs in the arm-holes of his waistcoat. “If he wants more let him work for it. Let him go into some business.”

“Why should he? He is young, and has the world at his feet. Why should he grind away at some dingy and uncongenial money-grubbing mill just for the fun of supporting your, or any other man’s, daughter. It isn’t good enough, and I tell you so candidly. And remember this: he has everything to lose and nothing to gain by the transaction, and with yourselves it is the other way about.”

“And what amount would meet your friend’s views, Mr Fordham?” was the rejoinder, quick spoken, and with cutting irony.

“He will have a position and title to keep up by and by,” answered Fordham, tranquilly. “I should say, a capital sum representing three thousand a year—not one farthing less.”

Old Glover sprang to his feet with a snort and an activity one would hardly have credited him with. He stared wildly at Fordham, gasped for breath and snorted again. Then he spluttered forth.

“I never heard anything so monstrous—such an outrageous piece of impertinence in my life.”

“But, my dear sir, surely I’ve put the case plain enough—”

“Don’t talk to me any more about it, sir,” interrupted the other furiously, “I won’t hear of such a preposterous suggestion.”

“Do I understand that you refuse the condition, then?”

“Most emphatically you may understand that very thing. Three thousand a year—ha—ha! He must be mad! But I tell you what it is, sir,” he blared forth, stung by Fordham’s cool and indifferent demeanour. “That young scoundrel—yes—that young scoundrel, I say,” with a stamp of the foot, “shall be made to fulfil his engagement—shall be made to, I say.”

“Shall he? Excuse my reminding you of the old proverb concerning the horse which may be taken to the water.”

“Sha’n’t he! I’ll sue him for breach of promise. I’ll claim such swinging damages as never were asked for in a court of law yet. I’ll ruin him—yes, I’ll ruin him, by God!”

“You may obtain a few hundreds at the outside. But you said something just now about your daughter’s heart being broken. Do you propose to heal that fractured organ by exposing the young lady to the jeers of a not over particular crowd in a public court, and making her the laughing stock of every newspaper reader in the kingdom for the sake of a few hundred pounds?”

“That’s my business, sir—that’s my business,” was the savage reply.

“Even then you will have to prove any specific promise at all. Under the circumstances this will be a matter of some difficulty, I imagine. Why not think over the terms I have stated?”

“Never, sir I never! Such unheard-of impudence?” And he fairly danced at the idea.

“Well, then, I’ve no more to say. In my opinion a man is a fool who ties himself to any woman. A lion might as well make himself the slave of a cat. But when he is expected to embrace the exhilarating career of a mill-horse in order that the dear creature may own a conveniently supporting slave—if he does so, I say, he deserves to be hung on sight. I shall certainly advise Phil Orlebar not to marry anybody on a cent less than three thousand a year, and I believe he will take my advice.”

“Very well, sir. We shall see—we shall see. And, by the way, Mr—ar—Fordham”—and the trade mind of the successful huckster again rose to the surface—“you are really a most clever advocate, and I must—ar—congratulate you. But ‘nothing for nothing,’ you know. Now how much of this fabulous income was to have found its way into your pocket if obtained? Commission, you understand.”

There was such a lurid look in Fordham’s dark face as he quickly rose to his feet, that even old Glover, dancing with rage, quailed and stepped back a pace or two.

“I must congratulate you, Mr Glover, on your good fortune in being an old man at this moment. However,” and his tone resumed its normal sarcastic ring. “However, there are no witnesses present so we may as well speak our minds to each other. It is abundantly obvious that you have laid yourselves out to hook young Philip Orlebar, and have done it deucedly clumsily too—so clumsily, that luckily for himself the bird has seen the limed twig in time. Anyhow, to rush him as you have done, and bestow the paternal blessing before it was asked for—in public too—is just the way to choke off irrevocably a youngster of his stamp. I don’t know that there’s anything more to be said, except this. Bring your action by all means, but you will find it as hard a matter to prove a specific promise, as you will to persuade any jury that it is not a clear case of trying to entrap the son of a man of position and superior birth.”

To convey any idea of old Glover’s state as he listened to this harangue, would be impossible. At first he was speechless, and Fordham began to think he was on the verge of apoplexy. Eventually he found his tongue, and the great cliff in the background fairly echoed to the sound of a volley of strange and gurgling oaths. Then the full torrent of his wrath burst forth. He would sue the delinquent Phil—would ruin him—would sue them both—for conspiracy, libel—what not. There was nothing, in fact, that he would not do—shooting—horse-whipping—every form of violence was enumerated. He should rue the day—every one concerned should rue the day, etc, etc.

But Fordham, lighting a fresh pipe, leaned comfortably back against the rock, and waited with perfect unconcern until this human boiler should have blown off all its steam—or burst—it didn’t matter which.

Chapter Twenty.

On The Summit.

A narrow apex of solid rock, surrounded by a little cairn of stones and four human figures. And around—what a panorama! Everywhere rolling billowy summits, snowy and hump-like, or rearing up sharp and defined in craggy pinnacles—everywhere they rise—north, south, east, or west, the eye wanders confused over a vast sea of them. Below, a mighty array of snowfields, great ice rivers flowing silently down between their rock-bound walls—divided, separated from each other by stupendous ramparts of cliff and snow. Further down still—far, far beneath the region of ice and snow—a confused labyrinth of tortuous valleys, green, and sprinkled here and there with clusters of brown specks, haply representing a town or village, the faintly glittering star above which resolves itself under the lens of the telescope into the metal-sheathed cupola of a church tower. The very immensity of the panorama is overwhelming in its bewildering vastness. The eye, the senses, are burdened with it—can hardly take it in. The whole world seems to lie spread out around and beneath, for this apex of rock soaring up in mid-air seems in very truth to tower above the rest of the world. It is the summit of the Rothhorn.

The two guides—good representatives of their class—with their thoughtful bronzed faces and horny hands, their quasi-uniform attire of grey frieze, and black-cock feather adorned hat—are busily engaged in examining the contents of a bottle, which they have extracted from its snug hiding-place in the heart of the cairn aforesaid—not in the hope of finding it to contain liquid refreshment, let us hasten to explain—nor are the contents precisely of a solid nature. They are calculated to appeal to the mind rather than the body, for they happen to consist, for the most part, of an assortment of visiting cards, bearing the names of such climbers as have hitherto gained this altitude, together with those of their guides, and any other remarks their owners may have seen fit to pencil thereon by way of record.

“Well, Phil? Think my prescription was good enough, eh?” says Fordham, cheerfully. “Worth while undergoing something to get such a view as this?”

But there is no cheerfulness about Philip Orlebar to-day, nor does he seem to take any interest in the view. Sprawling on his back, on the hard rock, with his hands behind his head, he is staring up at the sky—a phase of observation equally well undertaken at the bottom of a valley, thinks his companion. He merely growls in reply, and relapses into his abstraction.

It is the second day after the somewhat stormily concluding interview between Fordham and old Glover, but poor Philip’s prospects had in no wise been improved thereby—indeed, he could not but realise that they were hopelessly ruined. The only result achieved was that of, so to say, drawing the teeth of the aggrieved but scheming parent. That crafty plutocrat had been left, in a manner of speaking, on his back. He had been met with a crisp, healthy decisiveness, which had left nothing to be inferred, whereas had Philip himself constituted the other party to the interview, we fear that a tendency to temporise might have wedged him into the morass firmer and deeper than ever. So far Fordham had rendered him yeoman’s service.

But while released from one horn of the dilemma there was another upon which he remained firmly impaled, and whence it was beyond the power of any friend to extricate him, and that was a woman’s outraged pride. Alma Wyatt’s self-contained nature was a fearfully proud one, and it had been wounded to the quick. She, to allow herself to be deceived, fooled, made a plaything of, a mere pastime to add zest to a summer holiday—while all the time this man who had been whispering undying love to her was plighted to some one else! Her face fairly blanched with fierce wrath at the thought. And the insult, the publicity of the insult which he had put upon her—for his attentions were, of course, thoroughly understood by those around! No, she would never forgive him; never as long as he lived—or even on his deathbed!

Even then the natural fairness of her mind moved her to do him what justice she could. Her own heart told her that in his love for herself there was, at any rate, no make-believe. That, at any rate, was genuine. So much the worse. It argued weakness in her eyes, an unpardonable fault in a man. And, again—that he had dared to offer her a mere place in his affections—to suppose that she would share them with anybody, let alone the overdressed, underbred creature to whom he was already plighted, and who had come there and claimed him—publicly claimed him—under her eyes! It was an outrage which she could not bring herself so much as to think of condoning.

The only consolation was that she had all this time steadfastly refused to give him a definite answer—to allow him to give anybody to understand in definite terms that she was engaged to him. But what then? Had she not more than justified by implication such a conclusion on the part of those around her! Even now she was conscious of the exchanged glance, the hastily-stifled smile which her appearance evoked amid this or that group she happened to be passing, but this she could afford to treat with unconcern. Still the sting penetrated—penetrated and rankled. Her bitterness towards the chief offender hardened to white heat.

Nothing had been said between them. She took care to allow him no opportunity for that. No explanations were needed. The situation would admit of none—absolutely none. She made no external difference in her manner towards him—did not even change her place beside him at table. She was too proud to give him or the lookers-on to suppose that she was sorely wounded. But there was a steeliness in her tone when she addressed him or answered any remark of his, which conveyed as severe a punishment as even she could have wished. He was miserable.

Then he wrote to her—a piteous and heartbroken letter—explaining, protesting, and, above all, entreating. To ensure her receipt of this he slipped it himself beneath her door at a time when it could not escape her observation. As a result she did afford him an opportunity of speaking with her alone—an interview of just sufficient duration to allow her deliberately to tear his letter into small fragments before his face, carefully letting him see that it was unopened. Not a word did she speak. She could not trust herself. Her great eyes blazing forth such scorn from her pale face seemed to sear and burn into his. Then she turned and left him.

After that he was desperate. Poor Phil, soft-hearted and sensitive, felt that he had wrecked his whole life. He wished he could get up a corresponding indignation. But he could not, not even the fraction of a semblance of it. His heart seemed turned to water—his brain was ablaze. He would relieve his feelings by undertaking some desperate feat—thank Heaven, it was always easy to break one’s neck. And on this object intent he bounded upstairs three steps at a time in quest of his ice-axe.

But Providence, or his own forgetfulness, stood him in good stead that time, for the implement he sought was not in his room. He must have left it in Fordham’s. Thither he repaired.

“What’s the row, Phil?” said the latter, looking up quickly, taking in at the same time the obvious fact that things were not merely wrong with his unlucky friend, but very much more so than ever.

“Got my axe here? I’m just going for a—er—walk.”

“Well, you can put it off then, for I’ve just been scheming out a promising climb. Got two first-rate Zermatt guides, who turned up last night and want to go back there. Everything is ready. What do you say to doing the Rothhorn? We can start for the Mountet cabin soon after lunch; sleep there, get to the top any time by midday, and go down the other side to Zermatt. What do you say?”

“I’m your man, Fordham. Just the very thing I should like. And, I say—while we are about it—we might stay at Zermatt a few days and do the Matterhorn and two or three others, eh?”

Fordham looked at him curiously.

“Just the very thing I was going to suggest,” he said, “only I doubted whether you’d cotton. A smart shaking up and a change will do you all the good in the world, just now, Phil. We’ll start half an hour after lunch—there goes the second bell!—and go up to the hut quietly.”

This they had done, and now after an excruciatingly early start from that convenient tarrying-place, and about six hours of really difficult climbing, of scrambling from rock to rock, worming round “corners” overhanging dizzy heights—work that called into full play every muscle and braced every nerve—here they were on the summit with the world at their feet.

During the actual process of ascent Philip’s spirits seemed to return. The hard, and, in places, really hazardous, nature of the undertaking demanded all his attention, and whether clinging spreadeagled against the face of the cliff with no real hold to speak of, or balancing with one foot upon a rock projection about the size of a walnut, the other dangling over nothing, what time the next man above should secure a footing, or skirting gingerly the treacherous line of a curling snow cornice, where the thrust of the handle of an ice-axe left a hole through which lay viewed the awful depth of space which it overhung—all this constituted such a strain upon his faculties as to leave room for no other thought. Though strong and active, and in good training all round, Philip, be it remembered, was a novice at this sort of thing, consequently he found enough to do in ensuring his own safety, and, relatively, that of his companions. At one point of their progress a cloud had come over the mountain, rendering the rocks rimy and slippery, throwing out the ridge of ice crowning a sharp arête spectral and drear against the misty murk, magnifying the cliffs to gigantic proportions in their uncertain and ill-defined outlines. Gazing down upon the snow-flecked rocks far, far beneath, losing themselves in the swirling vortex of vapour, Philip felt rather small as he remembered his reckless intentions of the day before. Life, strange to say, seemed still worth having; at any rate such a way of ending it as a sudden dash through space on to those hideous black and white rocks struck him as grim and horrible in the extreme.

But the excitement and physical exertion over, and the summit attained, his depression returned. More over he was tired, for he had hardly slept the night before, was, in fact, just dropping off, when roused by his indefatigable friend at 2 a.m. to make a pretence at devouring the breakfast which the guides were preparing over the weather-beaten stove. Now the magnificence and extent of the view was nothing to him. It seemed to lie outside his gaze. In spirit he was back again at the hotel at Zinal. Was Alma beginning to miss him—to think more kindly of him, now that they would not see each other for some days? Would those execrable Glovers have left by the time he returned? And would all come right again? If only it might!

But if his younger friend’s thoughts were far-away down in the valley they had come up out of, Fordham’s were not. That saturnine individual was, for him, in high spirits. He had got out an excellent map—in the production of such Switzerland stands in the foremost place—and with the guides was busy verifying the topographical details of the stupendous panorama lying beneath and around. The cloud which had overshadowed them during their ascent had long since vanished, and now the sky was blue and clear, and the air like an elixir of life. The only clouds were those from three pipes, for the two guides and Fordham were smoking like chimneys.

But they had been an hour on the summit, and the air, though exhilarating, was uncommonly chill. It became time to start downwards. The guides were beginning to repack the haversacks.

“Have a pull at this, Phil,” said Fordham, handing him a flask. “And—I tell you what it is, man. You don’t know when you’re well off.”

“Oh, I don’t?”

“Rather not. Look at this,” with a comprehensive sweep of the hand. “Think what a splendid climb we had to get up here. Think what a splendid one we are going to have to get down, better, in fact, because less of sheer fag, and then think how many poor devils there are who would give their heads to be here to-day, instead of slaving their hearts out all their lives to support some snarling, ungrateful female, and a mob of more or less dirty and wholly detestable brats.”

“Candidly, my dear chap,” returned Philip, “you are becoming somewhat of the nature of a bore. I seem to have heard something very like that before—not once, nor yet twice. The salutary instructions of the immortal Mr Barlow, of ‘Sandford and Merton’ fame, shine forth as very masterpieces of sparkling pungency when contrasted with your latter-day harangues. I want to know what the devil all this has to do with me.”

“You shall! The gist of the parable is this. You are thinking all this time that Paradise lies at present in the Zinal valley in general, and very particularly in the Hôtel Durand; whereas in actual fact, so far as any semblance of that institution may be said to exist, it lies around and before you. For you are free at present, Phil, free as the air up here which is making us shiver, your freedom is as boundless as this rolling view of half a continent upon which we look down. You have the world at your feet as literally as we have it before us now.”

“Go on, Mr Barlow. Pray proceed.”

“I will. At present you are thinking what a Paradise every moment of life would be if coupled with the charmer down yonder. You are drawing all manner of glowing mental pictures of the bliss of a home illumined by her divine presence. All fustian, my dear fellow, all fustian! These superstitions are encouraged by the women from obvious motives. But they have no foundation in actual fact. Now what I am thinking of is this. I am thinking of you in two or three years’ time, caged up with your charmer in some shabby-genteel suburban semi-detached—for she hasn’t a shilling of her own, I believe—I am thinking of you, I say, the proud possessor of two or three unruly brats—who may or may not be kept clean—thus caged up, with a domineering, bad-tempered woman, who has parted with her illusions, in proportion as she has contributed towards populating this interesting orb. I am thinking of you toiling the day through, week in week out, at some sordid and uncongenial drudgery for a mere pittance. You can never be well off, my dear Phil, for to do you justice, you lack the essential qualities of rascality and sycophancy which are requisite to the manufacture of the ‘successful man.’ And while your scanty leisure is taken up policing a series of ever-changing and refractory domestics, or carrying on epistolary war with your landlord, in re his inevitable refusal to observe the most obvious provisions of his agreement, your much-needed slumbers will be invaded by the piercing and colicky yells of the last overfed cherub, and your night devoted to hospital duties in regard to that same. And then when you look back to—this day, for instance—I am not far out in asserting that you will catch yourself wondering whether such an unparalleled ass is even worth the sixpenny-worth of laudanum which should send him in search of the decisive change which may possibly be for the better, but can hardly be for the worse. There—that’s the other side of the orange, and now you can’t say it hasn’t been shown you.”

“That all, Fordham?”

“Nearly. But think it over, think it over, my dear chap. The gift of freedom is a grand and a glorious one. Don’t throw it away for the traditional mess of pottage—a comestible which may or may not be an excellent thing, but cannot in my humble judgment maintain its savour if subsisted on for the term of one’s natural life to the exclusion of all other articles of diet.”

“I appreciate the point of that highly finished hyperbole—at its true valuation,” returned Philip, ironically. “And, look here, Fordham, I feel it necessary to amend my former comment. A man who will undertake to deliver such an unconscionably prosy preachment, on the very apex of a high Alp, is no longer merely becoming a bore, but has become one—in fact is a bore, and that of the first magnitude.”

Chapter Twenty One.

The Falling Stone.

“Peter,” said Fordham, interrupting a story over which the guides were guffawing among themselves, and which related to a certain rash tourist who had undertaken to cross the Gorner glacier alone, giving Herr Baedeker as his authority for dispensing with the services of their fraternity, and how the adventurous one being eventually missed was duly sought for, which search resulted in the discovery of him at the bottom of a small crevasse in company with a sprained ankle and a Baedeker, and how some of them in resentment of the fancied slur upon their craft had grimly suggested that, whereas Baedeker had got him into his present quandary, it was only fair that Baedeker should get him out. “Peter, how long shall we take to get down to Zermatt?”

The man thus addressed stared gravely at the sky, then down at the valley, then at the surrounding heights, then at his colleague. The latter went through precisely the same formula. Then he replied—

“If de gentleman”—with a look at Philip—“go down so well as he did come up, then we shall get there in about seven or eight hours.”

“Right you are, Peter. You may put it at that,” cried Phil, with alacrity. “I’ll go down like a chamois, my buck. We’ll be in easy time for table d’hôte.” But the other did not enter into this spirit of exuberance. There was a touch of grimness in his reply, given with characteristic deliberation.

“You had better be late for de table d’hôte than not get to de table d’hôte ever again,” he said.

“That’s a damper, anyway,” rejoined Phil.

“It’s a well earned one,” said Fordham. “He wants you to realise that you can no more afford to be careless going down than you could coming up. And you can’t. You’re a heavyish chap, Phil, and there are places where if you lose your footing we are extremely likely to be unable to hold you up. And although your return to the valley we have just left may be welcome enough, I doubt if it will be adequately so if effected in fragmentary form. So don’t imagine you can afford to skip down the Rothhorn on one leg, that’s all.”

Peter Anderledy, the head guide, was a swarthy, thick-set fellow, black-bearded, and Italian looking—of apparently about forty, but in reality ten years younger. The other, Conrad Spinner, was about the same age but of a different build, being tall and straight, and of the Northern type. His bronzed face was almost as dark as that of his colleague, but his hair and moustache were blonde. The countenances of both men wore the sedate almost melancholy expression common to those of their calling, but the glance of their eyes was straight and quick. Both were addicted to the unlimited consumption of tobacco—also in common with those of their craft—a consideration by the way which is difficult to reconcile with the popular notion that the soothing weed is detrimental, not to say disastrous to the nerves, for if there is one class of men which combines the most consummate coolness and courage with an unlimited supply of sheer physical endurance and quickness of resource, assuredly that class is represented by the qualified Alpine guide.

Few Alpine peaks are perpendicular, even on their most precipitous side. The Rothhorn, however, is one of these, for its eastern face, if anything, slightly overhangs, falling in a magnificent drop of ironstone precipice, a depth of about fifteen hundred feet to the glacier beneath. Its summit is in reality in two peaks, one slightly lower than the other. The way lies not over but round the lower of these, effecting what is termed in mountaineering parlance a “corner.” There is excellent hold both for hand and foot, but whereas the climber at the moment of rounding this projection can neither see nor be seen by the rest of his party, and whereas, further, his body is slightly inclined outward over the dizzy height before mentioned, it follows that the novice, unless endowed with perfect steadiness of head and nerve, is apt to find the position a somewhat trying one.

Now this is just what befell Philip Orlebar. At the worst point of the projection, while hanging on, thus outwardly inclined, curiosity moved him to turn his face over his shoulder and look down. The effect of the stupendous height was disastrous. His hands, gripping the rock overhead, began to tremble. A coldness ran through his legs. He could not move. He felt that if he did so he must let go. Nor could he withdraw his gaze from that awful abyss.

“What on earth are you doing, Phil?” sung out Fordham, from behind, noticing that the rope had ceased moving.

“I’m looking down,” came the reply.

“You must not look down. You must come on,” called out the head guide, who was leading.

The voices broke the spell. With an effort he pulled himself together, and in a minute stood beside Peter. The others promptly followed.

“By Jove! That’s a grisly sort of place—eh, Peter?” he said. “I suppose it’s the worst of all?”

“No; it is not de vorst—but it looks de vorst,” was the slow reply. “But—you are all right. You have only to be careful—very careful.”

A slight change had been made in their position on the rope for the downward climb. Peter Anderledy, the head guide, took the lead as before. Philip as the novice, came next—the theory being that as he was more likely to make a false step than Fordham, there should be two above him to increase the chances of his safety—and indeed that of the whole party—for there are two or three places during the first hour’s descent of the Rothhorn on the Zermatt side where it is difficult to believe the rope would save anybody, so steep is the face of the rock, so slight the hold.

And now the work began in earnest. Almost immediately they got into a narrow gully—a mere indenture in the surface of the rock, going straight down for a considerable distance, and just sufficiently out of the perpendicular to enable them to scramble down it slowly and with infinite trouble—now sprawling face to the surface, now in ungainly, half-squatting attitude, knees almost on a level with the chin. There was hardly any hold as such; the climber preserving his position almost entirely by pressure against the snow and ice-encrusted sides of the shoot, much as an old-fashioned chimney sweeper in the prosecution of his trade. It was an ugly place, and in the slippery precariousness of the position with the whole height of the mountain to fall, was an extremely trying one.

“I say, Peter,” gasped Philip, as at a peremptory call from above to halt he was striving to make good his stability. “This is a devil of a bit, you know. I suppose if a fellow were to fall he wouldn’t stop till he got right down on the Durand glacier, eh?”

“Do not talk,” came the severe reply. “Take care of what you are doing. And mind de shtones.”

None too soon was the warning. Hardly were the words uttered than a large flat stone, as big as a full-sized photograph album—upon which Philip had reckoned as a secure support—gave way beneath his feet with a startling suddenness that made his blood run cold, and went crashing and bounding straight for Peter. The latter, however, had seen the catastrophe almost before it had occurred. With incredible celerity he rolled aside, and, clinging to the face of the rock like a fly on the wall, felt the air of the impromptu projectile as it shot by within a foot of him and right through what a fraction of a second before had been occupied by his body. Away it went, splitting to fragments, as in a series of leaps and bounds it disappeared from sight.

“I say, though, I’m awfully sorry,” said Philip, while Peter muttered some very bad language—secreta—and Fordham sung out a warning to him to be more careful and not to trust any stone until he had first well tested it.

At length the gully ended and was succeeded by some very pretty rock climbing. The side of the mountain here bore the aspect of being plated with huge slabs, and it was mainly upon the projections formed by what should have been the “joints” of these, together with cracks running across their surface, that the climbers were able to make their way.

“A steeple-jack’s work is a fool to this,” commented Phil, gazing at the two high above him as they descended cautiously and with cool deliberation from point to point.

With ordinary care there was no risk here. Each man securing his foothold before the others moved they descended slowly but surely. It was a delightful climb, and, indeed, no form of mountaineering is more interesting than rockwork of the kind. They arrived without accident at the point where the way lies through a gap in the high rock ridge, and sat down for a short rest as well as to refresh the inner man.

Experienced climbers prescribe the latter process for every two hours. Certain it is that such recuperation is exceedingly welcome no less often, thanks to the keen air of those high latitudes. But lack of time and the risk of catching a chill precludes anything but the briefest halt; wherefore, if the exertion immediate upon feeding resulteth not in excruciating indigestion, the subject may congratulate himself on an extra well-ordered internal economy. This poor Philip was destined to learn at the hands of that hardest of all preceptresses, experience. His normally buoyant spirits had deserted him, and as they resumed their way down the rugged rock-face of the mountain he felt altogether bad.

“This Alpineering is a fraud, Fordham,” he pronounced. “I know I’ve got a splitting headache, and feel as if there was a ball of string in my diaphragm. I guess the little grass climbs are good enough for me.”

“Look where you are going! Never mind de talking till we get down,” put in Peter Anderledy.

The peremptoriness of the rebuke brought Phil’s head back from over his shoulder with the celerity of a recruit at the word “eyes right!” Then he growled. But this expression of his dissatisfaction made upon the stolid guide not the faintest impression.

“Herr Gott!” imprecated the latter presently, with set teeth and a savage glance upward as he stopped to listen. “De shtones are falling.”

High above among the cliffs, but slightly in front of their line of march, a hollow rattle became audible. There was something weird and uncanny about the sound. No mortal hand, no mortal agency had loosened those rocks and sent them hurtling down into the depths below. It was almost as if the demons of the air were abroad.

The party was descending a long couloir or gully, which traversed obliquely the iron face of the mountain. The crannies of the rocks were filled with snow and the footing was good. Here and there a bit of sloping ice necessitated the cutting of a step or two, but, on the whole, the way was easy. Yet the guides seem to cast anxious glances upward, and ever and anon that ghostly echoing rattle was heard.

“Sunshine is a delightful thing,” quoth Fordham. “But like everything else to which that term applies it is bound to have its obverse side. I could wish just now it had been cloudier and colder.”

“Why the deuce should you wish that?” said Philip.

“Because then there wouldn’t be so many stones flying. You see, they’re frozen to the rock by a thin cementing of ice. As soon as the sun has any power that ice melts and they slide off. All these rock mountains are the very devil for falling stones. On the Matterhorn you hear them rattling all day long—”

A vehement imprecation from both guides simultaneously, interrupted them. There was a rushing sound in the air very like the “whigge” of a shell, and a shadow seemed to swoop over their heads. Looking upward they beheld a solid mass of rock of at least two tons’ weight, sailing through the air. It had shot outward from the last projecting portion of the cliff upon which it had struck, and now describing a lofty arc it whizzed directly over their position, and striking the rocks some hundred feet lower split into fragments, which went crashing and roaring down to the glacier beneath.

Fordham, contemplating this occurrence, shook his head slightly and said nothing. Philip opened his eyes wide and ejaculated, “By Jove!” The guides swore with renewed energy. Each action was characteristic.

For any such edifying notions as that the average man feels subdued and reverential in the presence of impending danger may safely be relegated to the Sunday school. In nine cases out of ten he relieves his feelings pretty much as these Alpine guides did theirs—or feels inclined to—presumably as the outcome of an unwonted excitement not unmixed perhaps with a sort of irritation against the powers that be, which have, in a manner of speaking, “cornered” him.

“We must get on so quick as we can. De shtones are going to fall to-day like a devil,” remarked Peter. This comparison as it stood was a correct one and graphic withal. But in point of fact no thought of the fall of Lucifer entered the honest guide’s head. He was merely reproducing a time-honoured and highly colloquial simile, the unconscious variation of which made Philip laugh.

For a quarter of an hour all went well. Suddenly that ominous rattle was heard again—right overhead. The three foremost were on a small but steep slope of hard ice, nor could they move out of the steps which had been cut by the foremost guide’s axe. It follows, therefore, that the attitudes struck by them were grotesque in the extreme as they stood glaring wildly upward at a rumbling shower of stones coming down straight at them, as though the power of the human eye might at a pinch avail to deflect the dreaded volley. On it came, whizzing and ricochetting by—the three men staring at it in the most ludicrous state of helplessness, Fordham ducking violently as a small chip rebounding from the ice grazed his ear like a slug. It was but a shower of small stones—none larger than a cricket ball. But a bullet is as potent for evil as a cannon shot, as Philip was destined to learn. He was seen to pick up his right leg with a howl of pain, and then to go rather white in the face.

“Are you hurt?” said the head guide, somewhat anxiously.

“Oh, not much, I suppose,” was the rather doleful reply. “I believe my ankle’s broken, that’s all.”

Peter, without a word, turned back to help him, but he declined any aid.

“The sooner we are out of this the better,” he said. “I can hop along somehow. Hand us your flask, Fordham. That’s better!”

And he was as good as his word. Though his foot was frightfully painful he found that he could still use it, and at length they left the rock-face of the mountain and gained the high ice arête which forms one of the spurs of the latter.

It was an awkward place wherein to be incapacitated. The way lay right along the very edge of the arête, where there was not room for two to walk abreast. But Phil was very game. The pain of his bruised ankle increased with every step, but he was not going to hamper his companions by collapsing. He took another liberal pull at Fordham’s flask, and started again manfully, trying to persuade himself that he was in reality more frightened than hurt.

But apart from this casualty the view as seen from the apex of the dizzy arête was a thing to make the very pulses bound with delight in the sheer exhilaration of living. Behind rose the stupendous cliffs of the eastern face of the Rothhorn, soaring up to its twin-peaked summit against the deep and cloudless blue. Immediately beneath, webbed and criss-crossed by innumerable cracks, lay an amphitheatre of vast glaciers flowing down from a crescent of grim and frowning cliffs culminating in the Ober-Gabelhorn, a tower of precipitous rock. Right opposite, the huge Matterhorn, a dark monolith, frowning, defiant—then a white sublimity of dazzling snow mountains, the broad hump of the Breithorn, and the two smaller ones known as Castor and Pollux—the perilous Lyskamm and the sheeny mass of the beautiful Monte Rosa. Glaciers, innumerable and vast, mighty rivers of rolling white waves, whatever way the eye should turn.

There was a sudden boom as of a heavy thunderpeal—a dull, roaring rush as of a mighty torrent. A grand avalanche was pouring down the dark perpendicular precipices which shut in the head of the Trift glacier, a cataract of powdery whiteness, which, when the glass was brought to bear, revealed hundreds of tons of frozen snow and huge ice blocks, falling into a frightful chasm at the foot of the cliff, whence arose a column of powdery spray for many minutes afterward. As this vast volume flowed down the metallic face of the dark rock, each peak and precipice around re-echoed the thunderous boom in a hundred differing reverberations.

Scarcely had this ceased than there came a sound of yodelling—cheery, melodious, distant. Far down in the centre of the white and crevassed plain, four specks, equidistant, were moving in a downward course.

“It is a caravan who has come over de Trift-joch,” pronounced Conrad Spinner. And then he and his colleagues lifting up their voices, answered the yodel, while Philip, being unskilled in that art but moved by a British and youthful desire to make a noise of some sort, lifted up his in an ear-splitting and quite unmelodious yell.

The ice arête came to an end at last and was succeeded by a long descent over loose rocks, which, piled and packed together by the hand of Nature, made a very tedious and difficult descent at the best of times. To poor Philip with his bruised ankle it became excruciating. At length he could endure it no longer and sank to the ground with an agonised groan.

“Off with your boot, and let’s appraise the damage,” said Fordham. “Yes, it’s a bad whack,” he went on, as the extent of the injury became manifest—for the whole ankle was frightfully swollen. It had been struck on the inside, and the least touch made the sufferer wince. Both guides shook their heads gloomily as they marked the angry and inflamed aspect of the contusion, and Peter Anderledy fired off a few invocations of his Maker in terms far more forcible than reverential. Even for this there might have been found some extenuation. Besides a rough and steep descent over the loose rocks aforesaid, there yet remained a bit of cliff to be climbed down, the end of a glacier to cross, then at least half an hour down a high moraine, whose edge, sharp and knife-like, entailed single file progress, before they reached a point from which a mule or a litter might be used, and even that point was some hours distant from the village.

This, however, was accomplished at last—the descent of the cliff being avoided by a long détour. With the help of Conrad’s stalwart shoulder poor Phil managed to get along with a minimum of pain. But it took them rather more than twice the ordinary time to accomplish the traject, nor did they arrive at the point whence artificial transport could be used until long after the hour when they had reckoned upon sitting safe and snug at table d’hôte in the Hôtel Mont Cervin at Zermatt.

“I say, Conrad, this is a right royal sell,” said Philip, as they sat round a handful of fire which the guide had built—for Peter and Fordham had hurried on to procure a mule or a chaise-à-porteur, and could not return for some hours. “Sell isn’t the word for it. We reckoned on doing the Matterhorn the day after to-morrow. I suppose there’s no chance of it now.”

“If you can walk as far as de Riffel in one week you can tink you are very lucky,” answered the guide.

Poor Philip groaned.

“It’s deuced rough,” he said. “I didn’t come over to Zermatt to lie up a week in a confounded hotel.”

“It would be worse to lie up for ever in de churchyard,” answered Conrad oracularly, as he lit his pipe.

“I suppose it would—but, I say, Conrad, how is it you fellows all talk such good English? Where the dickens do you learn it?”

“We learn it in de vinter. We make a class.”

“But who teaches you? Do you get hold of an Englishman?”

“No. It is a Swiss—a Swiss who has been five years in America. But,” added the guide, naïvely, “I don’t tink his pronunciation is very good.”

Meanwhile, Fordham and Peter were making their way down the wild and desolate Trift-thal in the moonlight.

“I never did see de Rothhorn so bad for de shtones as to-day,” grumbled the latter. “Dey come down, oh, like a devil.”

“It’s unfortunate, but one consolation is that it was nobody’s fault. It was sheer ill-luck, Peter, and you or Conrad might equally well have been hit.”

“No, it is nobody’s fault,” assented Peter. “But, if anyting goes wrong with de gentleman dere are always peoples what say it is de guide’s fault. But dat is just de very ting no guide can help—de falling shtones. We get over de place as quick as we can, but we can’t run. Ach!” he concluded, with a disgusted shake of the head.

There was reason in what he said. An Alpine guide under the circumstances is in much the same position as the captain of a ship. There are casualties which can be averted neither by the skill of the one nor the seamanship of the other, nor the courage of both. Yet when such occur public opinion is equally hard on both.

It was midnight before the sufferer was safely housed. The local practitioner looked grave, very grave, when he examined the injury. He peremptorily forbade the patient to set foot to the ground until he gave him leave, and that under pain of almost certainly losing his foot altogether.

“Great events from little causes spring.” The little cause in this instance was that little stone. There was a grim literalness in Peter Anderledy’s unconscious variation of a well-worn simile when he predicted that the stones were going to fall “like a devil”—for the falling of that little stone was destined to alter the course of Philip Orlebar’s whole life. Its effect might well have been the result of satanic intervention.

Chapter Twenty Two.

A Weapon to Hand.

“Hallo, Wentworth?”

“Hallo, Fordham!”

“Hot, isn’t it?”

“Beastly hot.”

Thus characteristically did these two Britons greet each other, meeting unexpectedly on the steps of one of the hotels at Zermatt. The bell was ringing for table d’hôte luncheon, and the sojourners in that extensive caravanserai were dropping in by twos and threes; ladies—ruddy of countenance, the result of sunburn—sketch-book and alpenstock in hand; spectacled Teutons in long black coats with the inevitable opera-glass slung around them; English youths armed with butterfly net or tennis racket, and a sprinkling of the ubiquitous Anglican parson whose nondescript holiday attire, which its wearer flattered himself savoured of the real mountaineer while not entirely disguising his “cloth,” imparted to him very much the aspect of a raffish undertaker in attenuated circumstances. The usual line of guides, taciturn and melancholy, roosted upon the low wall just outside the hotel, or stood in a knot in front of the wood-carving shop opposite, their normal stolidity just awakened into a gleam of speculative interest by the appearance of a string of vehicles heaving in sight amid a cloud of dust, upon the road which leads up from St. Nicolas. For this was before the days of the railway, and Zermatt, still uncockneyfied, retained most of its pristine picturesqueness in spite of the monster hotels dominating its quaint brown chalets. And then the majestic cone of the Matterhorn, towering up from its plinth of rock and glacier.

“Are you staying in this house, Wentworth?” pursued Fordham. “I thought the ‘Monte Rosa’ was the hotel patronised by all you regular climbing fellows.”

“It is, as a rule. But I thought I’d come here for a change. Besides, when I’m not climbing I like to be among ordinary people. One gets a little sick of hearing nothing but guide-and-rope ‘shop’ talked. Where have you turned up from now?”

“Zinal. Came viâ the top of the Rothhorn. Orlebar got rather a nasty whack from a falling stone. He’ll have to lie by for a day or two.”

“Did he? By Jove! Now you mention it, I heard there had been a one-horse kind of accident yesterday. I think they said it was on the Trift-joch. But I didn’t believe it, and then, you see, I started early this morning to walk up to the Stockje hut and am only just back. Poor chap! I say, though, is he badly hit?”

“Between you and me and yonder mule, he is rather. Badly enough to knock him out of any more climbing this season. He’ll have to get all the brag he can out of the Rothhorn alone until next year, at any rate. It’s rough on him, too, as he was keen on doing a few of the bigger things.”

“Rough it is. Poor chap! I must go upstairs and see him after tiffin. But, come along, Fordham, we had better go in. You can sit by me; there are a lot of empty places around my end of the room.”

From their place at table—a remote corner—they could watch the room filling. The bulk of the people were of the order already referred to, but there were some new arrivals, mostly uninteresting—a parson or two; a thick-set Scotchman with a blowsy wife and a whole tribe of wooden-faced, flaxen-haired children; a couple of undergraduates in neckties of vivid hue, presumably their college colours; item, a pair of grim spinsters of uncertain age and tract-disseminating principles; in short, the average ruck of our fellow-countrymen abroad.

“Rather a pretty girl, that,” murmured Wentworth.

Fordham, who was critically inspecting the wine-list, looked up. Two ladies had just entered the room, and it was to the younger of these that Wentworth had referred. Both were dark, and the elder bore traces of having been at one time strikingly handsome—the younger was so. In their remarkable duplication of each other Nature had unmistakably ticketed them mother and daughter.

Upon Fordham the entry of these two produced an astonishing effect. All the colour faded from his swarthy cheek, leaving a sallow livid paleness. His lips were drawn tightly against his teeth, and his black piercing eyes, half-closed, seemed to dart forth lurid lightnings, as he watched the unconscious pair moving down the long room towards their seat. Would they discover his presence? Surely there was something magnetic in that burning glance—a something to which the objects of it could hardly remain unconscious. Yet they did.

He saw them take their places. His back was to the light. They had not seen him. But had they caught the devilish, awful, surging hate expressed in that fearful scrutiny it is doubtful whether they would have eaten their luncheon with so tranquil an appetite.

“Good-looking, isn’t she?” pursued Wentworth, too intent on his own observation to perceive the change that had come over his friend. “For the matter of that, so is the mother—if it is her mother. They might easily be sisters. What do you think, Fordham?”

“So they might,” replied the latter tranquilly, sticking up his eyeglass. He had entirely recovered his self-possession, although there lurked within his glance a snake-like glitter. “Older one needn’t be a day more than forty, and the girl half that. But I say, Wentworth, I thought you were past admiring that sort of cattle.”

“Well, I am in a general way. But that’s a splendid-looking girl. Even you must admit that.”

If a slight shrug of the shoulders amounted to admission, Wentworth was welcome to it. The object of his eulogy had all the dazzling “points” of a perfect brunette. Hair and eyelashes dark as night—and abundance of both—large clear eyes, and regular, white teeth which gleamed every now and then in a bewitching smile as their owner responded to some remark on the part of her right-hand neighbour with whom she had entered into conversation. While she was in full view of the two men her mother was not, being screened by the ample dimensions and exuberant cap strings of a portly British matron opposite.

The confused clatter and buzz of a babel of tongues at length began to suffer abatement, then gave way to the rasping pandemonium of chairs pushed back by the dozen along the polished wooden floor. Fordham, watching his opportunity, left the room under cover of two large groups of people already flitting from his neighbourhood. As he did so, a sidelong glance towards the two new arrivals satisfied him that his identity was still unperceived by them, which, for reasons of his own, he particularly desired. Having thus effected his retreat undiscovered, he paused and took up his position in the passage within a few yards of the dining-room door as if awaiting the exit of somebody.

The passage, unlighted by windows, was in shade—in a grateful and refreshing gloom, deepened and intensified by the glare of the midday sunshine in the room beyond. As he thus stood, his back to the wall, that expression of deadly vindictive hatred returned to his face. Standing back in the semi-gloom, he resembled some lurking beast of prey in the diabolical passions impacted upon his countenance.

“What an exceedingly disagreeable-looking man,” had remarked more than one of the passers by who had noted this expression. “Whoever he is waiting for will have an unpleasant surprise, anyhow.” This was true, but not in the superficial and commonplace sense in which it was enunciated.

Nearly everybody had left the room but those two. Would they sit there all day? Ah! Now!

They were advancing up the room, the glowing and graceful beauty of the girl in striking contrast to the maturer and time-worn charms of the matron, who was still wonderfully handsome. It was a pleasing picture to look upon.

But the effect upon him now standing there was assuredly far from a pleasing one. The expression of his countenance had become positively devilish. The two were in the doorway now—the girl making some light laughing remark to her mother.

But just then the latter looked up—looked up full into Fordham’s face, into the burning, sunken eyes glowering in the shadow, and the effect was startling. A look of the most awful terror came over her face, and she put up her hands wildly as if to ward off some appalling object. Then with a quick, gasping shriek, she fell heavily to the floor in a dead faint.

The shriek was echoed by another, as the girl flung herself wildly down beside her mother, adjuring the latter by every endearing name. But the poor woman lay in a ghastly and livid unconsciousness that was more like death.

The lounging, chatting groups—mostly ladies—which had been scattered about the hall, startled by the shrieking, came crowding up in dubious, half-frightened fashion. Waiters came pouring out of the dining-room door. To the head of these Fordham spoke.

“Is there a doctor staying in the house, Alphonse? The lady seems to be rather unwell. And—I say, Alphonse,” he added, “is Mr Wentworth still in the dining-room? I’ve been waiting for him ever so long.”

“Here I am, Fordham,” answered a voice behind him. “Why, man, I’ve been out for at least ten minutes. But what’s the row?”

Meanwhile the sufferer was being cared for by several of her own sex. As it happened, too, there was an English doctor staying in the house, who now appeared on the scene.

“Stand back, please,” he ordered, authoritatively. “She’ll soon come round. But give her some air at any rate. What caused it?” he added to the sobbing, frightened girl. “She has had a shock of some sort.”

“She couldn’t have,” was the answer. “She—she—screamed and fell down. There was n-n-nothing to startle her—in fact, there was a strange gentleman standing there as if waiting for somebody. But he was a perfect stranger.”

All this Fordham—who had drawn out of the crowd and was out of sight, but not of hearing—caught. The doctor made no direct reply to the statement, though on the point of the utter unfamiliarity of the stranger’s appearance it is highly probable that he formed his own opinion.

“Let’s go and look at the visitors’ book,” suggested Wentworth. “I want to see if there’s any one I know.”

They strolled into the bureau and the book was produced. While Wentworth ran his eye attentively down the list of names, Fordham, standing behind him, hardly seemed to look at it. Anyhow, he evinced no interest whatever in the identity of anybody. But in reality the fact was the other way.

“The same name,” he said to himself. “The same name! That simplifies matters all round. Now I see daylight. At last—at last!”

Half an hour later Fordham strolled round to the village post-office and mailed a batch of letters. This was not in itself an extraordinary circumstance. But in the midst of that batch was one addressed to ‘Mrs Daventer,’ and he knew it would be delivered that same afternoon.

“What sort of a crowd at lunch, Fordham?” said Philip, as the door of his room opened to admit that worthy. “Any one new? Hullo, Wentworth! Where have you dropped from?”

“Oh, I’ve been around here about a week. But I say, Orlebar, it’s rather hard lines getting yourself knocked out of time this way.”

“Hard lines isn’t the word for it. And—what do you think? That confounded ass of a doctor says I sha’n’t be able to do any climbing this season. But he’s only a Swiss,” he added, with the youthful John Bull’s lordly contempt for talent or attainments encased in other than an Anglo-Saxon skull.

“You may depend upon it he knows his business,” responded Wentworth. “But you do as he tells you and keep your hoof up, old man, or you may be pinned up in this lively chamber for a month.”

“I suppose you’ve been doing some big climbs?” said Philip, wistfully.

“Not yet. Been taking it easy. I started to do the Deut Blanche the day after I came here, but the weather worked up bad and we had to turn back. I say, Orlebar, you’d better look sharp and get right. There was a deuced pretty girl at table d’hôte. Her mother fainted in the passage directly after, and there was a devil of an uproar. I believe Fordham made faces at her and scared her into a fit. He was the only person there at the time—”

“Ha! ha!” laughed Philip. “Scowled at her ‘like a devil,’ as Peter would say. Eh, Fordham?”

But the latter, who was lighting a cigar, made no reply.

“By the way, Orlebar,” said Wentworth. “Seen anything more of that girl you were so gone on at Les Avants, Miss—Miss—”

The speaker broke off with a start that was comical, for Fordham, while endeavouring to convey a mild and warning kick unseen of the third party—a thing which nobody ever succeeded in doing yet, and in all probability never will—had brought his hoof in contact with a corn, imparting to poor Wentworth the sensation as of a red-hot needle suddenly driven into his toe. In a measure it served him right, for his blundering had touched poor Philip on a very sore place. Lying there all the morning—with the prospect of a good many mornings and afternoons too, destined to be similarly spent—the poor fellow had found ample time for thought.

“What a chap you are, Wentworth!” he retorted, irritably. “Here is a poor devil tied by the leg in an infernal room for Heaven knows how long, and you can find nothing better to liven him up with than a lot of feeble and second-hand chaff. Let’s have something a little more amusing. Tell us some mountaineering lies for instance.”

And Wentworth spent the best part of the afternoon telling him some.

Chapter Twenty Three.

Forging the Link.

A pile of rocks overgrown with stunted rhododendron bushes and shaggy, weather-beaten pines, also stunted. Among these a foaming mountain torrent cleft its way, dashing through the deep, narrow chasm which walled it in some fifty feet below. A seldom-frequented path wound around the base of the rocks, passing over a crazy wooden bridge.

On the morning subsequent to the events just detailed Richard Fordham sat among the rocks aforesaid, smoking a cigar. He had lighted it on first arriving at this sequestered spot, and now the glowing end was almost burning his fingers. This showed that he had been waiting there for some time—half an hour at least.

Waiting? That was just what he was doing. But there was no impatience attendant on the process. His gaze had scarcely wandered from the stretch of open meadowland lying between his position and the brown roofs of Zermatt nearly a mile away—yet in it there was no concern, no anxiety.

An object was approaching along the path—a grey sunshade. Beneath this was a human figure—a female figure. Watching its approach, the expression of his countenance underwent a change; but in it there was still no impatience. The expression of that dark, saturnine countenance was one of exultant ferocity, such as might animate that of the concealed leopard as it watches the unsuspecting antelope advance step by step within easy springing distance of its lurking-place.

The new arrival continued to advance slowly until she had reached the rickety wooden bridge. There she paused and looked around as though puzzled.

At the sound of a cough above she started and changed colour, then catching sight of another path, began to ascend to where he stood. This was a platform of rock on the edge of the chasm. It was shut in by the trees in such fashion that any one standing there would be scarcely discernible from without, while commanding the approaches from the quarter whence any one would be in the least likely to advance.

The new-comer was an extremely well-preserved woman of middle age. She was slightly above the medium height, and her dark, flashing eyes and strongly marked brows gave her an imperious look which it needed not the firm jaw and erect figure to confirm. But the expression stamped upon her pale features at that moment was not that of power, rather it was one of apprehension—of undisguisable dread, dashed with strong abhorrence. As she stood there, panting with the exertion of the ascent, or agitation, or both, a chance observer might have discovered in her countenance a curious likeness to that of Fordham himself.

The latter made no gesture, uttered no word of greeting. The evil expression in his face was qualified by a thin, cold sneer. Thus they confronted each other—the one pale, apprehensive, yet with strong aversion and defiance in her eyes; the other self-possessed, thoroughly conscious of power, and returning hate for hate in fullest measure.

“Well?” broke from her at last, to the accompaniment of a half-checked stamp of the foot.

“Well?”

“What have you got to say to me?” she said curtly; adding, in a repressed volcano-storm of wrath and bitterness. “I have obeyed orders, you see.”

“You could not have done otherwise. Even you have the sense thoroughly to realise that.”

“But I didn’t know you were here,” she went on; “not yet, anyhow. When I saw you I got something of a shock, for my system is not what it was. You quite took me by surprise.”

“I believe you—for once. Finished actress as you are, even you could hardly have counterfeited the tragic effect produced by my unexpected appearance yesterday. The devil himself could hardly have scared you more.”

“Of the two it is the devil himself that I should have preferred to see.”

“Undoubtedly. But the malevolent powers commonly attributed to that functionary are nothing to those I shall bring to bear on you if you neglect to carry out my instructions implicitly. On you and yours, I should have said.”

Was it there that the secret of his power lay? An involuntary spasm passed through her frame as if she had received a stab.

“Perhaps, then, you will oblige me by communicating them,” she hastened to reply. “For it happens I have made arrangements to leave here this very day—or to-morrow at latest.”

“Those arrangements you will have the trouble of cancelling, then.”

“Indeed! And may I ask why?”

“Certainly. Your appearance here yesterday is going to supply the weapon I have been working to forge for years. Nothing is now wanting to complete the chain. Yours is the hand that shall do so. To that end you will remain here—as long as I require your presence.”

“That is a very odd turn for events to take—that you should require my presence,” she said, with a bitter sneer.

“Very. In fact, the irony of the situation is unique. And yet there are people who say there is no such thing as poetic justice.”

“But now, suppose you begin by giving one some idea as to the nature of this wonderful plan of yours. I take for granted it is for nobody’s good, anyhow.”

“You are wrong there. It will tend most distinctly to the good of two people. And—calm your amazement—one of those people is yourself.”

“Your warning is wholly needed. The idea that any action of yours could tend to my advantage is sufficient to justify the wildest amazement, were there room for any other emotion than complete incredulity,” she answered, with a scornful smile.

“You shall see directly. But, first of all, let me congratulate you on the extremely fascinating appearance of—your daughter. It really does you the greatest credit—”

“We will leave her out of the question, if you please,” she interrupted, speaking quickly.

“But I don’t please—and that for the best possible reason. I said just now that the scheme in which I require your aid will tend to the advantage of two persons, one of them being yourself. The other is—your daughter.”

“Then you will certainly not obtain my aid. In anything that tends to involve my child in co-operation—however indirect—with yourself, I flatly refuse to have any hand.”

The sardonic smile deepened around Fordham’s mouth. He opened his cigar-case, took out a fresh cigar, and lighted it with the greatest deliberation.

“It is always a pity to commit oneself to a rash statement,” he said. “The determination just expressed you will directly see reason to reconsider—certainly before you leave this delightful spot.”

“Never!”

“Oh, but you will! You are, to do you justice, far too much a woman of the world—life has been far too comfortable, too prosperous for you—for you both—during, we’ll say, the last twenty years, for you to face the alternative now.”

“Has it? I will risk anything—face any alternative.”

“Even that of starvation?”

“Even that. But it will not come to that. Poverty it may be—but—we can work—we can live somehow.”

“Ha! ha! ha! Can you? Only try it. I see I was giving you undue credit just now when I defined you as a woman of the world. Those who talk airily of poverty are always the ones who have spent life in luxury. Think of it in all its aspects—of being on the very verge of starvation, of the fireless grate, and weeks of north-east wind and snowstorm, of the foul, insanitary den—kennel rather—covered by the same roof as that which shelters the most debased two-legged animals which ever bore semblance to the stamp of humanity. Think of the sights and sounds, the mad-drunk ruffians, and the fighting, clawing, screaming, harpies; the ‘language of the people,’ and nights made hideous with the yells of some one being murdered. This is what poverty is going to mean in your case. This is what you and your—child will come to. Stay a moment. You think I am exaggerating? You think, no doubt, you have friends who will help you—who will never see you come to this? But don’t flatter yourself. I will prevent them from helping you. I will cause them to spurn you from their doors—both of you. In fact, I will hunt you down into utter and complete ruin—both of you. Both of you—mark it well! Why do I not do so in any case? I don’t know. But oppose me in the slightest particular—neglect in the minutest detail the scheme I am going to set you to carry out—and this—and more than all this shall come upon you—shall come upon you both—as sure as I am a living man.”

Her face was as white as a sheet, and in her flashing eyes there was the look of a tigress whose whelps are menaced, as she advanced a step nearer to him, her breast heaving violently.

“Dare you boast that you are a living man?” she panted, clenching and unclenching her hands. “Are you not afraid I shall kill you where you stand? I shall some day—I know it!”

“Do—if you can. And, by the way, this would have been an excellent opportunity. In the first place, you would be entirely free from interruption, for I have already scouted the whole of this covert to ensure the absence of the regulation dauber intent on evolving the pictorial presentment of a dissipated-looking sugar-loaf, under the impression that he or she is sketching the Matterhorn. In the next, this country has practically abolished the death penalty, so that you would get a dozen years at most, and your child would have the honour of being the daughter of a convict as well as—But drop these melodramatics, and return to sound sense. Heavens, woman! I wonder you dare talk to me like this.” And as his memory leaped back his deep voice took the snarling rumble of an enraged wild beast.

Man and Nature are ever offering the most vivid and jarring contrasts. The brown roofs of the village, dominated by the white cubes of the great hotels, lay nestling amid the green meadows, against a background of stately mountains. The hoarse rush of the torrent, pent up in the narrow fissure at their feet, joined with the deeper roar of the churning Visp, gathering hourly in volume as the midday sun told in power upon its feeder, the great Gorner glacier, whose sheeny séracs reared their dazzling battlements in a blue and white line above the vernal pastures at the head of the valley, while the stately monolith of the giant Matterhorn towered aloft into the vivid blue of the cloudless heavens. Yet there, amid the sequestered solitude of the jagged pines, stood these two, confronting each other with deadly rage in their hearts, with bitterest hate and defiance flashing from their set faces and burning eyes—a very hell of evil passions surging alike in both.

“Now take your choice,” he went on. “Carry out my plan as I am about to lay it before you, and you will benefit yourself in doing so. Refuse, or mar it in the slightest detail, either by bungling or of set design, and I will utterly crush you both, beginning from this day. You know me.”

She made no answer. She never removed her eyes from his, and her breath came in quick, hard gasps. Her aspect was that of some dangerous animal cornered, driven to bay. Barely a couple of yards behind him was the brink of the narrow fissure by which the churning torrent cleft its way through the heart of the rocks. The sneering, mocking smile which came into his face as he read her thoughts was devilish in its maddening provocation.

“No go,” he said. “You couldn’t do it. I am much too firm on my pins. You would be extremely likely to go over yourself, and then what would become of Laura, left to my tender mercies?”

“You fiend! I think Satan himself must be a god compared with you.”

“Am I to take that as a compliment? Well, now to business. Sit down.”

“Thank you. I prefer to stand.”

“I don’t,” seating himself upon a boulder and puffing deliberately at his cigar. “Please yourself, however. And now kindly give me your best attention.”

Then for the next twenty minutes he did all the talking, though every now and then an ejaculation of anger, disgust, or dissidence would escape her. This, however, affected him not in the slightest degree. The cold, cutting, sarcastic tones flowed evenly on, laying down the details of what was to her a strange and startling plan. Not until he had unfolded it in all its bearings did he pause, as though to invite comment.

But by that time it was noticeable that the horror and decisiveness in her refusal to co-operate with which the woman had first received his suggestion had undergone a very marked abatement. She could even bring herself to discuss the scheme in some of its details.