CHAPTER IV

HOW HELEN CAME TO MALOJA

At Coire, or Chur, as the three-tongued Swiss often term it—German being the language most in vogue in Switzerland—Helen found a cheerful looking mountain train awaiting the coming of its heavy brother from far off Calais. It was soon packed to the doors, for those Alpine valleys hum with life and movement during the closing days of July. Even in the first class carriages nearly every seat was filled in a few minutes, while pandemonium reigned in the cheaper sections.

Helen, having no cumbersome baggage to impede her movements, was swept in on the crest of the earliest wave, and obtained a corner near the corridor. She meant to leave her handbag there, stroll up and down the station for a few minutes, mainly to look at the cosmopolitan crowd, and perhaps buy some fruit; but the babel of English, German, French, and Italian, mixed with scraps of Russian and Czech, that raged round a distracted conductor warned her that the wiser policy was to sit still.

An Englishwoman, red faced, elderly, and important, was offered a center seat, facing the engine, in Helen's compartment. She refused it. Her indignation was magnificent. To face the engine, she declared, meant instant illness.

"I never return to this wretched country that I do not regret it!" she shrilled. "Have you no telegraphs? Cannot your officials ascertain from Zurich how many English passengers may be expected, and make suitable provision for them?"

As this tirade was thrown away on the conductor, she proceeded to translate it into fairly accurate French; but the man was at his wits' end to accommodate the throng, and said so, with the breathless politeness that such a grande dame seemed to merit.

"Then you should set apart a special train for passengers from England!" she declared vehemently. "I shall never come here again—never! The place is overrun with cheap tourists. Moreover, I shall tell all my friends to avoid Switzerland. Perhaps, when British patronage is withdrawn from your railways and hotels, you will begin to consider our requirements."

Helen felt that her irate fellow countrywoman was metaphorically hurling large volumes of the peerage, baronetage, and landed gentry at the unhappy conductor's head. Again he pointed out that there was a seat at madam's service. When the train started he would do his best to secure another in the desired position.

As the woman, whose proportions were generous, was blocking the gangway, she received a forcible reminder from the end of a heavy portmanteau that she must clear out of the way. Breathing dire reprisals on the Swiss federal railway system, she entered unwillingly.

"Disgraceful!" she snorted. "A nation of boors! In another second I should have been thrown down and trampled on."

A stolid German and his wife occupied opposite corners, and the man probably wondered why the Englischer frau glared at him so fiercely. But he did not move.

Helen, thinking to throw oil on the troubled waters, said pleasantly, "Won't you change seats with me? I don't mind whether I face the engine or not. In any case, I intend to stand in the corridor most of the time."

The stout woman, hearing herself addressed in English, lifted her mounted eyeglasses and stared at Helen. In one sweeping glance she took in details. As it happened, the girl had expended fifteen of her forty pounds on a neat tailor made costume, a smart hat, well fitting gloves, and the best pair of walking boots she could buy; for, having pretty feet, it was a pardonable vanity that she should wish them well shod. Apparently, the other was satisfied that there would be no loss of caste in accepting the proffered civility.

"Thank you. I am very much obliged," she said. "It is awfully sweet of you to incommode yourself for my sake."

It was difficult to believe that the woman who had just stormed at the conductor, who had the effrontery to subject Helen to that stony scrutiny before she answered, could adopt such dulcet tones so suddenly. Helen, frank and generous-minded to a degree, would have preferred a gradual subsidence of wrath to this remarkable volte-face. But she reiterated that she regarded her place in a carriage as of slight consequence, and the change was effected.

The other adjusted her eyeglasses again, and passed in review the remaining occupants of the compartment. They were "foreigners," whose existence might be ignored.

"This line grows worse each year," she remarked, by way of a conversational opening. "It is horrid traveling alone. Unfortunately, I missed my son at Lucerne. Are your people on the train?"

"No. I too am alone."

"Ah! Going to St. Moritz?"

"Yes; but I take the diligence there for Maloja."

"The diligence! Who in the world advised that? Nobody ever travels that way."

By "nobody," she clearly conveyed the idea that she mixed in the sacred circle of "somebodies," carriage folk to the soles of their boots, because Helen's guidebook showed that a diligence ran twice daily through the Upper Engadine, and the Swiss authorities would not provide those capacious four-horsed vehicles unless there were passengers to fill them.

"Oh!" cried Helen. "Should I have ordered a carriage beforehand?"

"Most decidedly. But your friends will send one. They know you are coming by this train?"

Helen smiled. She anticipated a certain amount of cross examination at the hands of residents in the hotel; but she saw no reason why the ordeal should begin so soon.

"I must take my luck then," she said. "There ought to be plenty of carriages at St. Moritz."

Without being positively rude, her new acquaintance could not repeat the question thus shirked. But she had other shafts in her quiver.

"You will stay at the Kursaal, of course?" she said.

"Yes."

"A passing visit, or for a period? I ask because I am going there myself."

"Oh, how nice! I am glad I have met you. I mean to remain at Maloja until the end of August."

"Quite the right time. The rest of Switzerland is unbearable in August. You will find the hotel rather full. The Burnham-Joneses are there,—the tennis players, you know,—and General and Mrs. Wragg and their family, and the de la Veres, nominally husband and wife,—a most charming couple individually. Have you met the de la Veres? No? Well, don't be unhappy on Edith's account if Reginald flirts with you. She likes it."

"But perhaps I might not like it," laughed Helen.

"Ah, Reginald has such fascinating manners!" A sigh seemed to deplore the days of long ago, when Reginald's fascination might have displayed itself on her account.

Again there was a break in the flow of talk, and Helen began to take an interest in the scenery. Not to be balked, her inquisitor searched in a portmonnaie attached to her left wrist with a strap, and produced a card.

"We may as well know each other's names," she cooed affably. "Here is my card."

Helen read, "Mrs. H. de Courcy Vavasour, Villa Menini, Nice."

"I am sorry," she said, with a friendly smile that might have disarmed prejudice, "but in the hurry of my departure from London I packed my cards in my registered baggage. My name is Helen Wynton."

The eyeglasses went up once more.

"Do you spell it with an I? Are you one of the Gloucestershire Wintons?"

"No. I live in town; but my home is in Norfolk."

"And whose party will you join at the Maloja?"

Helen colored a little under this rigorous heckling. "As I have already told you, Mrs. Vavasour, I am alone," she said. "Indeed, I have come here to—to do some literary work."

"For a newspaper?"

"Yes."

Mrs. Vavasour received this statement guardedly. If Helen was on the staff of an important journal there was something to be gained by being cited in her articles as one of the important persons "sojourning" in the Engadine.

"It is really wonderful," she admitted, "how enterprising the great daily papers are nowadays."

Helen, very new to a world of de Courcy Vavasours, and Wraggs, and Burnham-Joneses, forgave this hawklike pertinacity for sake of the apparent sympathy of her catechist. And she was painfully candid.

"The weekly paper I represent is not at all well known," she explained; "but here I am, and I mean to enjoy my visit hugely. It is the chance of a lifetime to be sent abroad on such a mission. I little dreamed a week since that I should be able to visit this beautiful country under the best conditions without giving a thought to the cost."

Poor Helen! Had she delved in many volumes to obtain material that would condemn her in the eyes of the tuft hunter she was addressing, she could not have shocked so many conventions in so few words. She was poor, unknown, unfriended! Worse than these negative defects, she was positively attractive! Mrs. Vavasour almost shuddered as she thought of the son "missed" at Lucerne, the son who would arrive at Maloja on the morrow, in the company of someone whom he preferred to his mother as a fellow traveler. What a pitfall she had escaped! She might have made a friend of this impossible person! Nevertheless, rendered wary by many social skirmishes, she did not declare war at once. The girl was too outspoken to be an adventuress. She must wait, and watch, and furbish her weapons.

Helen, whose brain was nimble enough to take in some of Mrs. Vavasour's limitations, hoped that the preliminary inquiry into her caste was ended. She went into the corridor. A man made room for her with an alacrity that threatened an attempt to draw her into conversation, so she moved somewhat farther away, and gave herself to thought. If this prying woman was a fair sample of the people in the hotel, it was obvious that the human element in the high Alps held a suspicious resemblance to society in Bayswater, where each street is a faction and the clique in the "Terrace" is not on speaking terms with the clique in the "Gardens." Thus far, she owned to a feeling of disillusionment in many respects.

Two years earlier, a naturalist in the Highlands had engaged von Eulenberg to classify his collection, and Helen had gone to Inverness with the professor's family. She saw something then of the glories of Scotland, and her memories of the purple hills, the silvery lakes, the joyous burns tumbling headlong through woodland and pasture, were not dimmed by the dusty garishness of the Swiss scenery. True, Baedeker said that these pent valleys were suffocating in midsummer. She could only await in diminished confidence her first glimpse of the eternal snows.

And again, the holiday makers were not the blithesome creatures of her imagination. Some were reading, many sleeping, and the rest, for the most part, talking in strange tongues of anything but the beauties of the landscape. The Britons among them seemed to be brooding on glaciers. A party of lively Americans were playing bridge, and a scrap of gossip in English from a neighboring compartment revealed that some woman who went to a dance at Montreux, "wore a cheap voile, my dear, a last year's bargain, all crumpled and dirty. You never saw such a fright!"

These things were trivial and commonplace; a wide gap opened between them and Helen's day dreams of Alpine travel. By natural sequence of ideas she began to contrast her present loneliness with yesterday's pleasant journey, and the outcome was eminently favorable to Mark Bower. She missed him. She was quite sure, had he accompanied her from Zurich, that he would have charmed away the dull hours with amusing anecdotes. Instead of feeling rather tired and sleepy, she would now be listening to his apt expositions of the habits and customs of the places and people seen from the carriage windows. For fully five minutes her expressive mouth betrayed a little moue of disappointment.

And then the train climbed a long spiral which gave a series of delightful views of a picturesque Swiss village,—exactly such a cluster of low roofed houses as she had admired many a time in photographs of Alpine scenery. An exclamation from a little boy who clapped his hands in ecstasy caused her to look through a cleft in the nearer hills. With a thrill of wonder she discovered there, remote and solitary, all garbed in shining white, a majestic snow capped mountain. Ah! this was the real Switzerland! Her heart throbbed, and her breath came in fluttering gasps of excitement. How mean and trivial were class distinctions in sight of nature's nobility! She was uplifted, inspirited, filled with a sedate happiness. She wanted to voice her gladness as the child had done. A high pitched female voice said:

"Of course I had to call, because Jack meets her husband in the city; but it is an awful bore knowing such people."

Then the train plunged into a noisome tunnel, and turned a complete circle in the heart of the rock, and when it panted into daylight again the tall square tower of the village church had sunk more deeply into the valley. Far beneath, two bright steel ribbons—swallowed by a cavernous mouth that belched clouds of dense smoke—showed the strangeness of the route that led to the silent peaks. At times the rails crossed or ran by the side of a white, tree lined track that mounted ever upward. Though she could not recall the name of the pass, Helen was aware that this was one of the fine mountain roads for which Switzerland is famous. Pedestrians, singly or in small parties, were trudging along sturdily. They seemed to be mostly German tourists, jolly, well fed folk, nearly as many women as men, each one carrying a rucksack and alpenstock, and evidently determined to cover a set number of kilometers before night.

"That is the way in which I should like to see the Alps," thought Helen. "I am sure they sing as they walk, and they miss nothing of the grandeur and exquisite coloring of the hills. A train is very comfortable; but it certainly brings to these quiet valleys a great many people who would otherwise never come near them."

The force of this trite reflection was borne in on her by a loud wrangle between the bridge players. A woman had revoked, and was quite wroth with the man who detected her mistake.

At the next stopping place Helen bought some chocolates, and made a friend of the boy, a tiny Parisian. The two found amusement in searching for patches of snow on the northerly sides of the nearest hills. Once they caught a glimpse of a whole snowy range, and they shrieked so enthusiastically that the woman whose husband was also in the city glanced at them with disapproval, as they interrupted a full and particular if not true account of the quarrel between the Firs and the Limes.

At last the panting engine gathered speed and rushed along a wide valley into Samaden, Celerina, and St. Moritz. Mrs. Vavasour seemed to be absorbed in a Tauchnitz novel till the last moment, and the next sight of her vouchsafed to Helen was her departure from the terminus in solitary state in a pair-horse victoria. It savored somewhat of unkindness that she had not offered to share the roomy vehicle with one who had befriended her.

"Perhaps she was afraid I might not pay my share of the hire," said Helen to herself rather indignantly. But a civil hotel porter helped her to clear the customs shed rapidly, secured a comfortable carriage, advised her confidentially as to the amount that should be paid, and promised to telephone to the hotel for a suitable room. She was surprised to find how many of her fellow passengers were bound for Maloja. Some she had encountered at various stages of the journey all the way from London, while many, like Mrs. Vavasour, had joined the train in Switzerland. She remembered too, with a quiet humor that had in it a spice of sarcasm, that her elderly acquaintance had not come from England, and had no more right to demand special accommodation at Coire than the dozens of other travelers who put in an appearance at each station after Basle.

She noticed that as soon as the luggage was handed to the driver to be strapped behind each vehicle, the newcomers nearly all went to a neighboring hotel for luncheon. Being a healthy young person, and endowed with a sound digestion, Helen deemed this example too good not to be followed. Then she began a two hours' drive through a valley that almost shook her allegiance to Scotland. The driver, a fine looking old man, with massive features and curling gray hair that reminded her of Michelangelo's head of Moses, knowing the nationality of his fare, resolutely refused to speak any other language than English. He would jerk round, flourish his whip, and cry:

"Dissa pless St. Moritz Bad; datta pless St. Moritz Dorp."

Soon he announced the "Engelish kirch," thereby meaning the round arched English church overlooking the lake; or it might be, with a loftier sweep of the whip, "Piz Julier montin, mit lek Silvaplaner See."

All this Helen could have told him with equal accuracy and even greater detail. Had she not almost learned by heart each line of Baedeker on the Upper Engadine? Could she not have reproduced from memory a fairly complete map of the valley, with its villages, mountains, and lakes clearly marked? But she would not on any account repress the man's enthusiasm, and her eager acceptance of his quaint information induced fresh efforts, with more whip waving.

"Piz Corvatsch! Him ver' big fellow. Twelf t'ousen foots. W'en me guide him bruk ze leg."

She had seen that he was very lame as he hobbled about the carriage tying up her boxes. So here was a real guide. That explained his romantic aspect, his love of the high places. And he had been maimed for life by that magnificent mountain whose scarred slopes were now vividly before her eyes. The bright sunshine lit lakes and hills with its glory. A marvelous atmosphere made all things visible with microscopic fidelity. From Campfer to Silvaplana looked to be a ten minutes' drive, and from Silvaplana to Sils-Maria another quarter of an hour. Helen had to consult her watch and force herself to admit that the horses were trotting fully seven miles an hour before she realized that distances could be so deceptive. The summit of the lordly Corvatsch seemed to be absurdly near. She judged it within the scope of an easy walk between breakfast and afternoon tea from the hotel on a tree covered peninsula that stretched far out into Lake Sils-Maria, and she wondered why anyone should fall and break his leg during such a simple climb. Just to make sure, she glanced at the guidebook, and it gave her a shock when she saw the words, "Guides necessary,"—"Descent to Sils practicable only for experts,"—"Spend night at Roseg Inn,"—the route followed being that from Pontresina.

Then she recollected that the lovely valley she was traversing from beginning to end was itself six thousand feet above sea level,—that the observatory on rugged old Ben Nevis, which she had visited when in Scotland, was, metaphorically speaking, two thousand feet beneath the smooth road along which she was being driven, and that the highest peak on Corvatsch was still six thousand feet above her head. All at once, Helen felt subdued. The fancy seized her that the carriage was rumbling over the roof of the world. In a word, she was yielding to the exhilaration of high altitudes, and her brain was ready to spin wild fantasies.

At Sils-Maria she was brought suddenly to earth again. It must not be forgotten that her driver was a St. Moritz man, and therefore at constant feud with the men from the Kursaal, who brought empty carriages to St. Moritz, and went back laden with the spoil that would otherwise have fallen to the share of the local livery stables. Hence, he made it a point of honor to pass every Maloja owned vehicle on the road. Six times he succeeded, but, on the seventh, reversing the moral of Bruce's spider, he smashed the near hind wheel by attempting to slip between a landau and a stone post. Helen was almost thrown into the lake, and, for the life of her, she could not repress a scream. But the danger passed as rapidly as it had risen, and all that happened was that the carriage settled down lamely by the side of the road, with its weight resting on one of her boxes.

The driver spoke no more English. He bewailed his misfortune in free and fluent Italian of the Romansch order.

But he understood German, and when Helen demanded imperatively that he should unharness the horses, and help to prop the carriage off a crumpled tin trunk that contained her best dresses, he recovered his senses, worked willingly, and announced with a weary grin that if the gnaedische fraeulein would wait a little half-hour he would obtain another wheel from a neighboring forge.

Having recovered from her fright she was so touched by the poor fellow's distress that she promised readily to stand by him until repairs were effected. It was a longer job than either of them anticipated. The axle was slightly bent, and a blacksmith had to bring clamps and a jackscrew before the new wheel could be adjusted. Even then it had an air of uncertainty that rendered speed impossible. The concluding five miles of the journey were taken at a snail's pace, and Helen reflected ruefully that it was possible to "bruk ze leg" on the level high road as well as on the rocks of Corvatsch.

Of course, she received offers of assistance in plenty. Every carriage that passed while the blacksmith was at work pulled up and placed a seat therein at her command. But she refused them all. It was not that she feared to desert her baggage, for Switzerland is proverbially honest. The unlucky driver had tried to be friendly; his fault was due to an excess of zeal; and each time she declined the proffered help his furrowed face brightened. If she did not reach the hotel until midnight she was determined to go there in that vehicle, and in none other.

The accident threw her late, but only by some two hours. Instead of arriving at Maloja in brilliant sunshine, it was damp and chilly when she entered the hotel. A bank of mist had been carried over the summit of the pass by a southwesterly wind. Long before the carriage crawled round the last great bend in the road the glorious panorama of lake and mountains was blotted out of sight. The horses seemed to be jogging on through a luminous cloud, so dense that naught was visible save a few yards of roadway and the boundary wall or stone posts on the left side, where lay the lake. The brightness soon passed, as the hurrying fog wraiths closed in on each other. It became bitterly cold too, and it was with intense gladness that Helen finally stepped from the outer gloom into a glass haven of warmth and light that formed a species of covered-in veranda in front of the hotel.

She was about to pay the driver, having added to the agreed sum half the cost of the broken wheel by way of a solatium, when another carriage drove up from the direction of St. Moritz.

She fancied that the occupant, a young man whom she had never seen before, glanced at her as though he knew her. She looked again to make sure; but by that time his eyes were turned away, so he had evidently discovered his mistake. Still, he seemed to take considerable interest in her carriage, and Helen, ever ready to concede the most generous interpretation of doubtful acts, assumed that he had heard of the accident by some means, and was on the lookout for her.

It would indeed have been a fortunate thing for Helen had some Swiss fairy whispered the news of her mishap in Spencer's ears during the long drive up the mist laden valley. Then, at least, he might have spoken to her, and used the informal introduction to make her further acquaintance on the morrow. But the knowledge was withheld from him. No hint of it was even flashed through space by that wireless telegraphy which has existed between kin souls ever since men and women contrived to raise human affinities to a plane not far removed from the divine.

He had small store of German, but he knew enough to be perplexed by the way in which Helen's driver expressed "beautiful thanks" for her gift. The man seemed to be at once grateful and downhearted. Of course, the impression was of the slightest, but Spencer had been trained in reaching vital conclusions on meager evidence. He could not wait to listen to Helen's words, so he passed into the hotel, having the American habit of leaving the care of his baggage to the hall porter. He wondered why Helen was so late in arriving that he had caught her up on the very threshold of the Kursaal, so to speak. He would not forget the driver's face, and if he met the man again, it might be possible to find out the cause of the delay. He himself was before time. The federal railway authorities at Coire, awaking to the fact that the holiday rush was beginning, had actually dispatched a relief train to St. Moritz when the second important train of the day turned up as full as its predecessor.

At dinner Helen and he sat at little tables in the same section of the huge dining hall. The hotel was nearly full, and it was noticeable that they were the only persons who dined alone. Indeed, the head waiter asked Spencer if he cared to join a party of men who sat together; but he declined. There was no such general gathering of women; so Helen was given no alternative, and she ate the meal in silence.

She saw Mrs. Vavasour in a remote part of the salon. With her was a vacuous looking young man who seldom spoke to her but was continually addressing remarks to a woman at another table.

"That is the son lost at Lucerne," she decided, finding in his face some of the physical traits but none of the calculating shrewdness of his mother.

After a repast of many courses Helen wandered into the great hall, found an empty chair, and longed for someone to speak to. At the first glance, everybody seemed to know everybody else. That was not really the case, of course. There were others present as neglected and solitary as Helen; but the noise and merriment of the greater number dominated the place. It resembled a social club rather than a hotel.

Her chair was placed in an alley along which people had to pass who wished to reach the glass covered veranda. She amused herself by trying to pick out the Wraggs, the Burnham-Joneses, and the de la Veres. Suddenly she was aware that Mrs. Vavasour and her son were coming that way; the son unwillingly, the mother with an air of determination. Perhaps the Lucerne episode was about to be explained.

When young Vavasour's eyes fell on Helen, the boredom vanished from his face. It was quite obvious that he called his mother's attention to her and asked who she was. Helen felt that an introduction was imminent. She was glad of it. At that moment she would have chatted gayly with even a greater ninny than George de Courcy Vavasour.

But she had not yet grasped the peculiar idiosyncrasies of a woman who was famous for snubbing those whom she considered to be "undesirables." Helen looked up with a shy smile, expecting that the older woman would stop and speak; but Mrs. Vavasour gazed at her blankly—looked at the back of her chair through her body—and walked on.

"I don't know, George," Helen heard her say. "There are a lot of new arrivals. Some person of no importance, rather declassee, I should imagine by appearances. As I was telling you, the General has arranged——"

Taken altogether, Helen had crowded into portions of two days many new and some very unpleasant experiences.



CHAPTER V

AN INTERLUDE

Helen rose betimes next morning; but she found that the sun had kept an earlier tryst. Not a cloud marred a sky of dazzling blue. The phantom mist had gone with the shadows. From her bed room window she could see the whole length of the Ober-Engadin, till the view was abruptly shut off by the giant shoulders of Lagrev and Rosatch. The brilliance of the coloring was the landscape's most astounding feature. The lakes were planes of polished turquoise, the rocks pure grays and browns and reds, the meadows emerald green, while the shining white patches of snow on the highest mountain slopes helped to blacken by contrast the somber clumps of pines that gathered thick wherever man had not disputed with the trees the tenancy of each foot of meager loam.

This morning glory of nature gladdened the girl's heart and drove from it the overnight vapors. She dressed hurriedly, made a light breakfast, and went out.

There was no need to ask the way. In front of the hotel the narrow Silser See filled the valley. Close behind lay the crest of the pass. A picturesque chateau was perched on a sheer rock overhanging the Vale of Bregaglia and commanding a far flung prospect almost to the brink of Como. On both sides rose the mountain barriers; but toward the east there was an inviting gorge, beyond which the lofty Cima di Rosso flung its eternal snows heavenward.

A footpath led in that direction. Helen, who prided herself on her sense of locality, decided that it would bring her to the valley in which were situated, as she learned by the map, a small lake and a glacier.

"That will be a fine walk before lunch," she said, "and it is quite impossible to lose the way."

So she set off, crossing the hotel golf course, and making for a typical Swiss church that crowned the nearest of the foothills. Passing the church, she found the double doors in the porch open, and peeped in. It was a cozy little place, cleaner and less garish than such edifices are usually on the Continent. The lamp burning before the sanctuary showed that it was devoted to Roman Catholic worship. The red gleam of the tiny sentinel conveyed a curiously vivid impression of faith and spirituality. Though Helen was a Protestant, she was conscious of a benign emotion arising from the presence of this simple token of belief.

"I must ascertain the hours of service," she thought. "It will be delightful to join the Swiss peasants in prayer. One might come near the Creator in this rustic tabernacle."

She did not cross the threshold of the inner door. At present her mind was fixed on brisk movement in the marvelous air. She wanted to absorb the sunshine, to dispel once and for all the unpleasing picture of life in the high Alps presented by the stupid crowd she had met in the hotel overnight. Of course, she was somewhat unjust there; but women are predisposed to trust first impressions, and Helen was no exception to her sex.

Beyond the church the path was not so definite. Oddly enough, it seemed to go along the flat top of a low wall down to a tiny mountain stream. Steps were cut in the opposite hillside, but they were little used, and higher up, among some dwarf pines and azaleas, a broader way wound back toward the few scattered chalets that nestled under the chateau.

As the guidebook spoke of a carriage road to Lake Cavloccio, and a bridle path thence to within a mile of the Forno glacier, she came to the conclusion that she was taking a short cut. At any rate, on the summit of the next little hill she would be able to see her way quite distinctly, so she jumped across the brook and climbed through the undergrowth. Before she had gone twenty yards she stopped. She was almost certain that someone was sobbing bitterly up there among the trees. It had an uncanny sound, this plaint of grief in such a quiet, sunlit spot. Still, sorrow was not an affrighting thing to Helen. It might stir her sympathies, but it assuredly could not drive her away in panic.

She went on, not noiselessly, as she did not wish to intrude on some stranger's misery. Soon she came to a low wall, and, before she quite realized her surroundings, she was looking into a grass grown cemetery. It was a surprise, this ambush of the silent company among the trees. Hidden away from the outer world, and so secluded that its whereabouts remain unknown to thousands of people who visit the Maloja each summer, there was an aspect of stealth in its sudden discovery that was almost menacing. But Helen was not a nervous subject. The sobbing had ceased, and when the momentary effect of such a depressing environment had been resolutely driven off, she saw that a rusty iron gate was open. The place was very small. There were a few monuments, so choked with weeds and dank grass that their inscriptions were illegible. She had never seen a more desolate graveyard. Despite the vivid light and the joyous breeze rustling the pine branches, its air of abandonment was depressing. She fought against the sensation as unworthy of her intelligence; but she had some reason for it in the fact that there was no visible explanation of the mourning she had undoubtedly heard.

Then she uttered an involuntary cry, for a man's head and shoulders rose from behind a leafy shrub. Instantly she was ashamed of her fear. It was the old guide who acted as coachman the previous evening, and he had been lying face downward on the grass in that part of the cemetery given over to the unnamed dead.

He recognized her at once. Struggling awkwardly to his feet, he said in broken and halting German, "I pray your forgiveness, fraeulein. I fear I have alarmed you."

"It is I who should ask forgiveness," she said. "I came here by accident. I thought I could go to Cavloccio by this path."

She could have hit on no other words so well calculated to bring him back to every day life. To direct the steps of wanderers in his beloved Engadine was a real pleasure to him. For an instant he forgot that they had both spoken German.

"No, no!" he cried animatedly. "For lek him go by village. Bad road dissa way. No cross ze field. Verboten!"

Then Helen remembered that trespassers are sternly warned off the low lying lands in the mountains. Grass is scarce and valuable. Until the highest pastures yield to the arid rock, pedestrians must keep to the beaten track.

"I was quite mistaken," she said. "I see now that the path I was trying to reach leads here only. And I am very, very sorry I disturbed you."



He hobbled nearer, the ruin of a fine man, with a nobly proportioned head and shoulders, but sadly maimed by the accident which, to all appearances, made him useless as a guide.

"Pardon an old man's folly, fraeulein," he said humbly. "I thought none could hear, and I felt the loss of my little girl more than ever to-day."

"Your daughter? Is she buried here?"

"Yes. Many a year has passed; but I miss her now more than ever. She was all I had in the world, fraeulein. I am alone now, and that is a hard thing when the back is bent with age."

Helen's eyes grew moist; but she tried bravely to control her voice. "Was she young?" she asked softly.

"Only twenty, fraeulein, only twenty, and as tall and fair as yourself. They carried her here sixteen years ago this very day. I did not even see her. On the previous night I fell on Corvatsch."

"Oh, how sad! But why did she die at that age? And in this splendid climate? Was her death unexpected?"

"Unexpected!" He turned and looked at the huge mountain of which the cemetery hill formed one of the lowermost buttresses. "If the Piz della Margna were to topple over and crush me where I stand, it would be less unforeseen than was my sweet Etta's fate. But I frighten you, lady,—a poor return for your kindness. That is your way,—through the village, and by the postroad till you reach a notice board telling you where to take the path."

There was a crude gentility in his manner that added to the pathos of his words. Helen was sure that he wished to be left alone with his memories. Yet she lingered.

"Please tell me your name," she said. "I may visit St. Moritz while I remain here, and I shall try to find you."

"Christian Stampa," he said. He seemed to be on the point of adding something, but checked himself. "Christian Stampa," he repeated, after a pause. "Everybody knows old Stampa the guide. If I am not there, and you go to Zermatt some day—well, just ask for Stampa. They will tell you what has become of me."

She found it hard to reconcile this broken, careworn old man with her cheery companion of the previous afternoon. What did he mean? She understood his queer jargon of Italianized German quite clearly; but there was a sinister ring in his words that blanched her face. She could not leave him in his present mood. She was more alarmed now than when she saw him rising ghostlike from behind the screen of grass and weeds.

"Please walk with me to the village," she said. "All this beautiful land is strange to me. It will divert your thoughts from a mournful topic if you tell me something of its wonders."

He looked at her for an instant. Then his eyes fell on the church in the neighboring hollow, and he crossed himself, murmuring a few words in Italian. She guessed their meaning. He was thanking the Virgin for having sent to his rescue a girl who reminded him of his lost Etta.

"Yes," he said, "I will come. If I were remaining in the Maloja, fraeulein, I would beg you to let me take you to the Forno, and perhaps to one of the peaks beyond. Old as I am, and lame, you would be safe with me."

Helen breathed freely again. She felt that she had been within measurable distance of a tragedy. Nor was there any call on her wits to devise fresh means of drawing his mind away from the madness that possessed him a few minutes earlier. As he limped unevenly by her side, his talk was of the mountains. Did she intend to climb? Well, slow and sure was the golden rule. Do little or nothing during four or five days, until she had grown accustomed to the thin and keen Alpine air. Then go to Lake Lunghino,—that would suffice for the first real excursion. Next day, she ought to start early, and climb the mountain overlooking that same lake,—up there, on the other side of the hotel,—all rock and not difficult. If the weather was clear, she would have a grand view of the Bernina range. Next she might try the Forno glacier. It was a simple thing. She could go to and from the cabane in ten hours. Afterward, the Cima di Rosso offered an easy climb; but that meant sleeping at the hut. All of which was excellent advice, though the reflection came that Stampa's "slow and sure" methods were not strongly in evidence some sixteen hours earlier.

Now, the Cima di Rosso was in full view at that instant. Helen stopped.

"Do you really mean to tell me that if I wish to reach the top of that mountain, I must devote two days to it?" she cried.

Stampa, though bothered with troubles beyond her ken, forgot them sufficiently to laugh grimly. "It is farther away than you seem to think, fraeulein; but the real difficulty is the ice. Unless you cross some of the crevasses in the early morning, before the sun has had time to undo the work accomplished by the night's frost, you run a great risk. And that is why you must be ready to start from the cabane at dawn. Moreover, at this time of year, you get the finest view about six o'clock."

The mention of crevasses was somewhat awesome. "Is it necessary to be roped when one tries that climb?" she asked.

"If any guide ever tells you that you need not be roped while crossing ice or climbing rock, turn back at once, fraeulein. Wait for another day, and go with a man who knows his business. That is how the Alps get a bad name for accidents. Look at me! I have climbed the Matterhorn forty times, and the Jungfrau times out of count, and never did I or anyone in my care come to grief. 'Use the rope properly,' is my motto, and it has never failed me, not even when two out of five of us were struck senseless by falling stones on the south side of Monte Rosa."

Helen experienced another thrill. "I very much object to falling stones," she said.

Stampa threw out his hands in emphatic gesture. "What can one do?" he cried. "They are always a danger, like the snow cornice and the neve. There is a chimney on the Jungfrau through which stones are constantly shooting from a height of two thousand feet. You cannot see them,—they travel too fast for the eye. You hear something sing past your ears, that is all. Occasionally there is a report like a gunshot, and then you observe a little cloud of dust rising from a new scar on a rock. If you are hit—well, there is no dust, because the stone goes right through. Of course one does not loiter there."

Then, seeing the scared look on her face, he went on. "Ladies should not go to such places. It is not fit. But for men, yes. There is the joy of battle. Do not err, fraeulein,—the mountains are alive. And they fight to the death. They can be beaten; but there must be no mistakes. They are like strong men, the hills. When you strive against them, strain them to your breast and never relax your grip. Then they yield slowly, with many a trick and false move that a man must learn if he would look down over them all and say, 'I am lord here.' Ah me! Shall I ever again cross the Col du Lion or climb the Great Tower? But there! I am old, and thrown aside. Boys whom I engaged as porters would refuse me now as their porter. Better to have died like my friend, Michel Croz, than live to be a goatherd."

He seemed to pull himself up with an effort. "That way—to your left—you cannot miss the path. Addio, signorina," and he lifted his hat with the inborn grace of the peasantry of Southern Europe.

Helen was hoping that he might elect to accompany her to Cavloccio. She would willingly have paid him for loss of time. Her ear was becoming better tuned each moment to his strange patois. Though he often gave a soft Italian inflection to the harsh German syllables, she grasped his meaning quite literally. She had read so much about Switzerland that she knew how Michel Croz was killed while descending the Matterhorn after having made the first ascent. That historic accident happened long before she was born. To hear a man speak of Croz as a friend sounded almost unbelievable, though a moment's thought told her that Whymper, who led the attack on the hitherto impregnable Cervin on that July day in 1865, was still living, a keen Alpinist.

She could not refrain from asking Stampa one question, though she imagined that he was now in a hurry to take the damaged carriage back to St. Moritz. "Michel Croz was a brave man," she said. "Did you know him well?"

"I worshiped him, fraeulein," was the reverent answer. "May I receive pardon in my last hour, but I took him for an evil spirit on the day of his death! I was with Jean Antoine Carrel in Signor Giordano's party. We started from Breuil, Croz and his voyageurs from Zermatt. We failed; he succeeded. When we saw him and his Englishmen on the summit, we believed they were devils, because they yelled in triumph, and started an avalanche of stones to announce their victory. Three days later, Carrel and I, with two men from Breuil, tried again. We gained the top that time, and passed the place where Croz was knocked over by the English milord and the others who fell with him. I saw three bodies on the glacier four thousand feet below,—a fine burial-ground, better than that up there."

He looked back at the pines which now hid the cemetery wall from sight. Then, with another courteous sweep of his hat, he walked away, covering the ground rapidly despite his twisted leg.

If Helen had been better trained as a woman journalist, she would have regarded this meeting with Stampa as an incident of much value. Long experience of the lights and shades of life might have rendered her less sensitive. As it was, the man's personality appealed to her. She had been vouchsafed a glimpse into an abyss profound as that into which Stampa himself peered on the day he discovered three of the four who fell from the Matterhorn still roped together in death. The old man's simple references to the terrors lurking in those radiant mountains had also shaken her somewhat. The snow capped Cima di Rosso no longer looked so attractive. The Orlegna Gorge had lost some of its beauty. Though the sun was pouring into its wooded depths, it had grown gloomy and somber in her eyes. Yielding to impulse, she loitered in the village, took the carriage road to the chateau, and sat there, with her back to the inner heights and her gaze fixed on the smiling valley that opened toward Italy out of the Septimer Pass.

Meanwhile, Stampa hurried past the stables, where his horses were munching the remains of the little oaten loaves which form the staple food of hard worked animals in the Alps. He entered the hotel by the main entrance, and was on his way to the manager's bureau, when Spencer, smoking on the veranda, caught sight of him.

Instantly the American started in pursuit. By this time he had heard of Helen's accident from one of yesterday's passers by. It accounted for the delay; but he was anxious to learn exactly what had happened.

Stampa reached the office first. He was speaking to the manager, when Spencer came in and said in his downright way:

"This is the man who drove Miss Wynton from St. Moritz last night. I don't suppose I shall be able to understand what he says. Will you kindly ask him what caused the trouble?"

"It is quite an easy matter," was the smiling response. "Poor Stampa is not only too eager to pass every other vehicle on the road, but he is inclined to watch the mountains rather than his horses' ears. He was a famous guide once; but he met with misfortune, and took to carriage work as a means of livelihood. He has damaged his turnout twice this year; so this morning he was dismissed by telephone, and another driver is coming from St. Moritz to take his place."

Spencer looked at Stampa. He liked the strong, worn face, with its half wistful, half resigned expression. An uneasy feeling gripped him that the whim of a moment in the Embankment Hotel might exert its crazy influence in quarters far removed from the track that seemed then to be so direct and pleasure-giving.

"Why did he want to butt in between the other fellow and the landscape? What was the hurry, anyhow?" he asked.

Stampa smiled genially when the questions were translated to him. "I was talking to the signorina," he explained, using his native tongue, for he was born on the Italian side of the Bernina.

"That counts, but it gives no good reason why he should risk her life," objected Spencer.

Stampa's weather furrowed cheeks reddened. "There was no danger," he muttered wrathfully. "Madonna! I would lose the use of another limb rather than hurt a hair of her head. Is she not my good angel? Has she not drawn me back from the gate of hell? Risk her life! Are people saying that because a worm-eaten wheel went to pieces against a stone?"

"What on earth is he talking about?" demanded Spencer. "Has he been pestering Miss Wynton this morning with some story of his present difficulties?"

The manager knew Stampa's character. He put the words in kindlier phrase. "Does the signorina know that you have lost your situation?" he said.

Even in that mild form, the suggestion annoyed the old man. He flung it aside with scornful gesture, and turned to leave the office. "Tell the gentleman to go to Zermatt and ask in the street if Christian Stampa the guide would throw himself on a woman's charity," he growled.

Spencer did not wait for any interpretation. "Hold on," he said quietly. "What is he going to do now? Work, for a man of his years, doesn't grow on gooseberry bushes, I suppose."

"Christian, Christian! You are hot-headed as a boy," cried the manager. "The fact is," he went on, "he came to me to offer his services. But I have already engaged more drivers than I need, and I am dismissing some stable men. Perhaps he can find a job in St. Moritz."

"Are his days as guide ended?"

"Unfortunately, yes. I believe he is as active as ever; but people won't credit it. And you cannot blame them. When one's safety depends on a man who may have to cling to an ice covered rock like a fly to a window-pane, one is apt to distrust a crooked leg."

"Did he have an accident?"

The manager hesitated. "It is part of his sad history," he said. "He fell, and nearly killed himself; but he was hurrying to see the last of a daughter to whom he was devoted."

"Is he a local man, then?"

"No. Oh, no! The girl happened to be here when the end came."

"Well, I guess he will suit my limited requirements in the fly and window-pane business while I remain in Maloja," said Spencer. "Tell him I am willing to put up ten francs a day and extras for his exclusive services as guide during my stay."

Poor Stampa was nearly overwhelmed by this unexpected good fortune. In his agitation he blurted out, "Ah, then, the good God did really send an angel to my help this morning!"

Spencer, however, reviewing his own benevolence over a pipe outside the hotel, expressed the cynical opinion that the hot sun was affecting his brain. "I'm on a loose end," he communed. "Next time I waft myself to Europe on a steamer I'll bring my mother. It would be a bully fine notion to cable for her right away. I want someone to take care of me. It looks as if I had a cinch on running this hotel gratis. What in thunder will happen next?"

He could surely have answered that query if he had the least inkling of the circumstances governing Helen's prior meeting with Stampa. As it was, the development of events followed the natural course. While Spencer strolled off by the side of the lake, the old guide lumbered into the village street, and waited there, knowing that he would waylay the bella Inglesa on her return. Though she came from the chateau and not from Cavloccio, he did not fail to see her.

At first she was at a loss to fathom the cause of Stampa's delight, and still less to understand why he should want to thank her with such exuberance. She imagined he was overjoyed at having gone back to his beloved profession, and it was only by dint of questioning that she discovered the truth. Then it dawned on her that the man had been goaded to desperation by the curt message from St. Moritz,—that he was sorely tempted to abandon the struggle, and follow into the darkness the daughter taken from him so many years ago,—and the remembrance of her suspicion when they were about to part at the cemetery gate lent a serious note to her words of congratulation.

"You see, Stampa," she said, "you were very wrong to lose faith this morning. At the very moment of your deepest despair Heaven was providing a good friend for you."

"Yes, indeed, fraeulein. That is why I waited here. I felt that I must thank you. It was all through you. The good God sent you——"

"I think you are far more beholden to the gentleman who employed you than to me," she broke in.

"Yes, he is splendid, the young voyageur; but it was wholly on your account, lady. He was angry with me at first, because he thought I placed you in peril in the matter of the wheel."

Helen was amazed. "He spoke of me?" she cried.

"Ah, yes. He did not say much, but his eyes looked through me. He has the eyes of a true man, that young American."

She was more bewildered than ever. "What is his name?" she asked.

"Here it is. The director wrote it for me, so that I may learn how to pronounce it."

Stampa produced a scrap of paper, and Helen read, "Mr. Charles K. Spencer."

"Are you quite certain he mentioned me?" she repeated.

"Can I be mistaken, fraeulein. I know, because I studied the labels on your boxes. Mees Helene Weenton—so? And did he not rate me about the accident?"

"Well, wonders will never cease," she vowed; and indeed they were only just beginning in her life, which shows how blind to excellent material wonders can be.

At luncheon she summoned the head waiter. "Is there a Mr. Charles K. Spencer staying in the hotel?" she asked.

"Yes, madam."

"Will you please tell me if he is in the room?"

The head waiter turned. Spencer was studying the menu. "Yes, madam. There he is, sitting alone, at the second table from the window."

It was quite to be expected that the subject of their joint gaze should look at them instantly. There is a magnetism in the human eye that is unfailing in that respect, and its power is increased a hundredfold when a charming young woman tries it on a young man who happens to be thinking of her at the moment.

Then Spencer realized that Stampa had told Helen what had taken place in the hotel bureau, and he wanted to kick himself for having forgotten to make secrecy a part of the bargain.

Helen, knowing that he knew, blushed furiously. She tried to hide her confusion by murmuring something to the head waiter. But in her heart she was saying, "Who in the world is he? I have never seen him before last night. And why am I such an idiot as to tremble all over just because he happened to catch me looking at him?"



CHAPTER VI

THE BATTLEFIELD

Both man and woman were far too well bred to indulge in an oeillade. The knowledge that each was thinking of the other led rather to an ostentatious avoidance of anything that could be construed into any such flirtatious overture.

Though Stampa's curious statement had puzzled Helen, she soon hit on the theory that the American must have heard of the accident to her carriage. Yes, that supplied a ready explanation. No doubt he kept a sharp lookout for her on the road. He arrived at the hotel almost simultaneously with herself, and she had not forgotten his somewhat inquiring glance as they stood together on the steps. With the chivalry of his race in all things concerning womankind, he was eager to render assistance, and under the circumstances he probably wondered what sort of damsel in distress it was that needed help. It was natural enough too that in engaging Stampa he should refer to the carelessness that brought about the collapse of the wheel. Really, when one came to analyze an incident seemingly inexplicable, it resolved itself into quite commonplace constituents.

She found it awkward that he should be sitting between her and a window commanding the best view of the lake. If Spencer had been at any other table, she could have feasted her eyes on the whole expanse of the Ober-Engadin Valley. Therefore she had every excuse for looking that way, whereas he had none for gazing at her. Spencer appeared to be aware of this disability. For lack of better occupation he scrutinized the writing on the menu with a prolonged intentness worthy of a gourmand or an expert graphologist.

Helen rose first, and that gave him an opportunity to note her graceful carriage. Though born in the States, he was of British stock, and he did not share the professed opinion of the American humorist that the typical Englishwoman is angular, has large feet, and does not know how to walk. Helen, at any rate, betrayed none of these elements of caricature. Though there were several so-called "smart" women in the hotel,—women who clung desperately to the fringe of Society on both sides of the Atlantic,—his protegee was easily first among the few who had any claim to good looks.

Helen was not only tall and lithe, but her movements were marked by a quiet elegance. It was her custom, in nearly all weathers, to walk from Bayswater to Professor von Eulenberg's study, which, needless to say, was situated near the British Museum. She usually returned by a longer route, unless pelting rain or the misery of London snow made the streets intolerable. Thus there was hardly a day that she did not cover eight miles at a rapid pace, a method of training that eclipsed all the artifices of beauty doctors and schools of deportment. Her sweetly pretty face, her abundance of shining brown hair, her slim, well proportioned figure, and the almost athletic swing of her well arched shoulders, would entitle her to notice in a gathering of beauties far more noted than those who graced Maloja with their presence that year. In addition to these physical attractions she carried with her the rarer and indefinable aura of the born aristocrat. As it happened, she merited that description both by birth and breeding; but there is a vast company entitled to consideration on that score to whom nature has cruelly denied the necessary hallmarks—otherwise the pages of Burke would surely be embellished with portraits.

Indeed, so far as appearance went, it was rather ludicrous to regard Helen as the social inferior of any person then resident in the Kursaal, and it is probable that a glimmering knowledge of this fact inflamed Mrs. de Courcy Vavasour's wrath to boiling point, when a few minutes later, she saw her son coolly walk up to the "undesirable" and enter into conversation with her.

Helen was seated in a shady corner. A flood of sunlight filled the glass covered veranda with a grateful warmth. She had picked up an astonishingly well written and scholarly guide book issued by the proprietors of the hotel, and was deep in its opening treatise on the history and racial characteristics of the Engadiners, when she was surprised at hearing herself addressed by name.

"Er—Miss—er—Wynton, I believe?" said a drawling voice.

Looking up, she found George de Courcy Vavasour bending over her in an attitude that betokened the utmost admiration for both parties to the tete-a-tete. Under ordinary conditions,—that is to say, if Vavasour's existence depended on his own exertions,—Helen's eyes would have dwelt on a gawky youth endowed with a certain pertness that might in time have brought him from behind the counter of a drapery store to the wider arena of the floor. As it was, a reasonably large income gave him unbounded assurance, and his credit with a good tailor was unquestionable. He represented a British product that flourishes best in alien soil. There exists a foreign legion of George de Courcy Vavasours, flaccid heroes of fashion plates, whose parade grounds change with the seasons from Paris to the Riviera, and from the Riviera to some nook in the Alps. Providence and a grandfather have conspired in their behalf to make work unnecessary; but Providence, more far-seeing than grandfathers, has decreed that they shall be effete and light brained, so the type does not endure.

Helen, out of the corner of her eye, became aware that Mrs. de Courcy Vavasour was advancing with all the plumes of the British matron ruffled for battle. It was not in human nature that the girl should not recall the slight offered her the previous evening. With the thought came the temptation to repay it now with interest; but she thrust it aside.

"Yes, that is my name," she said, smiling pleasantly.

"Well—er—the General has asked me to—er—invite you take part in some of our tournaments. We have tennis, you know, an' golf, an' croquet, an' that sort of thing. Of course, you play tennis, an' I rather fancy you're a golfer as well. You look that kind of girl—Eh, what?"

He caressed a small mustache as he spoke, using the finger and thumb of each hand alternately, and Helen noticed that his hands were surprisingly large when compared with his otherwise fragile frame.

"Who is the General?" she inquired.

"Oh, Wragg, you know. He looks after everything in the amusement line, an' I help. Do let me put you down for the singles an' mixed doubles. None of the women here can play for nuts, an' I haven't got a partner yet for the doubles. I've been waitin' for someone like you to turn up."

"You have not remained long in suspense," she could not help saying. "You are Mr. Vavasour, are you not?"

"Yes, better known as Georgie."

"And you arrived in Maloja last evening, I think. Well, I do play tennis, or rather, I used to play fairly well some years ago——"

"By gad! just what I thought. Go slow in your practice games, Miss Wynton, an' you'll have a rippin' handicap."

"Would that be quite honest?" said Helen, lifting her steadfast brown eyes to meet his somewhat too free scrutiny.

"Honest? Rather! You wait till you see the old guard pullin' out a bit when they settle down to real business. But the General is up to their little dodges. He knows their form like a book, an' he gets every one of 'em shaken out by the first round—Eh, what?"

"The arrangement seems to be ideal if one is friendly with the General," said Helen.

Vavasour drew up a chair. He also drew up the ends of his trousers, thus revealing that the Pomeranian brown and myrtle green stripes in his necktie were faithfully reproduced in his socks, while these master tints were thoughtfully developed in the subdominant hues of his clothes and boots.

"By Jove! what a stroke of luck I should have got hold of you first!" he chuckled. "I'm pretty good at the net, Miss Wynton. If we manage things properly, we ought to have the mixed doubles a gift with plus half forty, an' in the ladies' singles you'll be a Queen's Club champion at six-stone nine—Eh, what?"

Though Vavasour represented a species of inane young man whom Helen detested, she bore with him because she hungered for the sound of an English voice in friendly converse this bright morning. At times her life was lonely enough in London; but she had never felt her isolation there. The great city appealed to her in all its moods. Her cheerful yet sensitive nature did not shrink from contact with its hurrying crowds. The mere sense of aloofness among so many millions of people brought with it the knowledge that she was one of them, a human atom plunged into a heedless vortex the moment she passed from her house into the street.

Here in Maloja things were different. While her own identity was laid bare, while men and women canvassed her name, her appearance, her occupation, she was cut off from them by a social wall of their own contriving. The attitude of the younger women told her that trespassers were forbidden within that sacred fold. She knew now that she had done a daring thing—outraged one of the cheap conventions—in coming alone to this clique-ridden Swiss valley. Better a thousand times have sought lodgings in some small village inn, and mixed with the homely folk who journeyed thither on the diligence or tramped joyously afoot, than strive to win the sympathy of any of these shallow nonentities of the smart set.

Even while listening to "Georgie's" efforts to win her smiles with slangy confidences, she saw that Mrs. Vavasour had halted in mid career, and joined a group of women, evidently a mother and two daughters, and that she herself was the subject of their talk. She wondered why. She was somewhat perplexed when the conclave broke up suddenly, the girls going to the door, Mrs. Vavasour retreating majestically to the far end of the veranda, and the other elderly woman drawing a short, fat, red faced man away from a discussion with another man.

"Jolly place, this," Vavasour was saying. "There's dancin' most nights. The dowager brigade want the band to play classical music, an' that sort of rot, you know; but Mrs. de la Vere and the Wragg girls like a hop, an' we generally arrange things our own way. We'll have a dance to-night if you wish it; but you must promise to——"

"Georgie," cried the pompous little man, "I want you a minute!"

Vavasour swung round. Evidently he regarded the interruption as "a beastly bore." "All right, General," he said airily. "I'll be there soon. No hurry, is there?"

"Yes, I want you now!" The order was emphatic. The General's only military asset was a martinet voice, and he made the most of it.

"Rather rotten, isn't it, interferin' with a fellow in this way?" muttered Vavasour. "Will you excuse me? I must see what the old boy is worryin' about. I shall come back soon—Eh, what?"

"I am going out," said Helen; "but we shall meet again. I remain here a month."

"You'll enter for the tournament?" he asked over his shoulder.

"I—think so. It will be something to do."

"Thanks awfully. And don't forget to-night."

Helen laughed. She could not help it. The younger members of the Wragg family were eying her sourly through the glass partition. They seemed to be nice girls too, and she made up her mind to disillusion them speedily if they thought that she harbored designs on the callow youth whom they probably regarded as their own special cavalier.

When she passed through the inner doorway to go to her room she noticed that the General was giving Georgie some instructions which were listened to in sulky silence. Indeed, that remarkable ex-warrior was laying down the law of the British parish with a clearness that was admirable. He had been young himself once,—dammit!—and had as keen an eye for a pretty face as any other fellow; but no gentleman could strike up an acquaintance with an unattached female under the very nose of his mother, not to mention the noses of other ladies who were his friends. Georgie broke out in protest.

"Oh, but I say, General, she is a lady, an' you yourself said——"

"I know I did. I was wrong. Even a wary old bird like me can make a mistake. Mrs. Vavasour has just warned my wife about her. It's no good arguing, Georgie, my boy. Nowadays you can't draw the line too rigidly. Things permissible in Paris or Nice won't pass muster here. I'm sorry, Georgie. She's a high stepper and devilish taking, I admit. Writes for some ha'penny rag—er—for some cheap society paper, I hear. Why, dash it all, she will be lampooning us in it before we know where we are. Just you go and tell your mother you'll behave better in future. Excellent woman, Mrs. Vavasour. She never makes a mistake. Gad! don't you remember how she spotted that waiter from the Ritz who gulled the lot of us at the Jetee last winter? Took him for the French marquis he said he was, every one of us, women and all, till Mrs. V. fixed her eye on him and said, 'Gustave!' Damme! how he curled up!"

George was still obdurate. A masquerading waiter differed from Helen in many essentials. "He was a Frenchman, an' they're mostly rotters. This girl is English, General, an' I shall look a proper sort of an ass if I freeze up suddenly after what I've said to her."

"Not for the first time, my boy, and mebbe not for the last." Then, in view of the younger man's obvious defiance, the General's white mustache bristled. "Of course, you can please yourself," he growled: "but neither Mrs. Wragg nor my daughters will tolerate your acquaintance with that person!"

"Oh, all right, General," came the irritated answer. "Between you an' the mater I've got to come to heel; but it's a beastly shame, I say, an' you're all makin' a jolly big mistake."

Georgie's intelligence might be superficial; but he knew a lady when he met one, and Helen had attracted him powerfully. He was thanking his stars for the good fortune that numbered him among the earliest of her acquaintances in the hotel, and it was too bad that the barring edict should have been issued against her so unexpectedly. But he was not of a fighting breed, and he quailed before the threat of Mrs. Wragg's displeasure.

Helen, after a delightful ramble past the chateau and along the picturesque turns and twists of the Colline des Artistes, returned in time for tea, which was served on the veranda, the common rendezvous of the hotel during daylight. No one spoke to her. She went out again, and walked by the lake till the shadows fell and the mountains glittered in purple and gold. She dressed herself in a simple white evening frock, dined in solitary state, and ventured into the ball room after dinner.

Georgie was dancing with Mrs. de la Vere, a languid looking woman who seemed to be pining for admiration. At the conclusion of the waltz that was going on when Helen entered, Vavasour brought his partner a whisky and soda and a cigarette. He passed Helen twice, but ignored her, and whirled one of the Wragg girls off into a polka. Again he failed to see her when parties were being formed for a quadrille. Even to herself she did not attempt to deny a feeling of annoyance, though she extracted a bitter amusement from the knowledge that she had been slighted by such a vapid creature.

She was under no misconception as to what had happened. The women were making a dead set against her. If she had been plain or dowdy, they might have been friendly enough. It was an unpardonable offense that she should be good looking, unchaperoned, and not one of the queerly assorted mixture they deemed their monde. For a few minutes she was really angry. She realized that her only crime was poverty. Given a little share of the wealth held by many of these passee matrons and bold-eyed girls, she would be a reigning star among them, and could act and talk as she liked. Yet her shyness and reserve would have been her best credentials to any society that was constituted on a sounder basis than a gathering of snobs. Among really well-born people she would certainly have been received on an equal footing until some valid reason for ostracism was forthcoming. The imported limpets on this Swiss rock of gentility were not sure of their own grip. Hence, they strenuously refused to make room for a newcomer until they were shoved aside.

Poor, disillusioned Helen! When she went to church she prayed to the good Lord to deliver her and everybody else from envy, hatred, and malice, and all uncharitableness. She felt now that there might well be added to the Litany a fresh petition which should include British communities on the Continent in the list of avoidable evils.

At that instant the piquant face and figure of Millicent Jaques rose before her mind's eye. She pictured to herself the cool effrontery with which the actress would crush these waspish women by creating a court of every eligible man in the place. It was not a healthy thought, but it was the offspring of sheer vexation, and Helen experienced her second temptation that day when de la Vere, the irresistible "Reginald" of Mrs. Vavasour's sketchy reminiscences, came and asked her to dance.

She recognized him at once. He sat with Mrs. de la Vere at table, and never spoke to her unless it was strictly necessary. He had distinguished manners, a pleasant voice, and a charming smile, and he seemed to be the devoted slave of every pretty woman in the hotel except his wife.

"Please pardon the informality," he said, with an affability that cloaked the impertinence. "We are quite a family party at Maloja. I hear you are staying here some weeks, and we are bound to get to know each other sooner or later."

Helen could dance well. She was so mortified by the injustice meted out to her that she almost accepted de la Vere's partnership on the spur of the moment. But her soul rebelled against the man's covert insolence, and she said quietly:

"No, thank you. I do not care to dance."

"May I sit here and talk?" he persisted.

"I am just going," she said, "and I think Mrs. de la Vere is looking for you."

By happy chance the woman in question was standing alone in the center of the ball room, obviously in quest of some man who would take her to the foyer for a cigarette. Helen retreated with the honors of war; but the irresistible one only laughed.

"That idiot Georgie told the truth, then," he admitted. "And she knows what the other women are saying. What cats these dear creatures can be, to be sure!"

Spencer happened to be an interested onlooker. Indeed, he was trying to arrive at the best means of obtaining an introduction to Helen when he saw de la Vere stroll leisurely up to her with the assured air of one sated by conquest. The girl brushed close to him as he stood in the passage. She held her head high and her eyes were sparkling. He had not heard what was said; but de la Vere's discomfiture was so patent that even his wife smiled as she sailed out on the arm of a youthful purveyor of cigarettes.

Spencer longed for an opportunity to kick de la Vere; yet, in some sense, he shared that redoubtable lady-killer's rebuff. He too was wondering if the social life of a Swiss hotel would permit him to seek a dance with Helen. Under existing conditions, it would provide quite a humorous episode, he told himself, to strike up a friendship with her. He could not imagine why she had adopted such an aloof attitude toward all and sundry; but it was quite evident that she declined anything in the guise of promiscuous acquaintance. And he, like her, felt lonely. There were several Americans in the hotel, and he would probably meet some of the men in the bar or smoking room after the dance was ended. But he would have preferred a pleasant chat with Helen that evening, and now she had gone to her room in a huff.

Then an inspiration came to him. "Guess I'll stir up Mackenzie to send along an introduction," he said. "A telegram will fix things."

It was not quite so easy to explain matters in the curt language of the wire, he found, and it savored of absurdity to amaze the beer-drinking Scot with a long message. So he compromised between desire and expediency by a letter.

"DEAR MR. MACKENZIE," he wrote, "life is not rapid at this terminus. It might take on some new features if I had the privilege of saying 'How de do' to Miss Wynton. Will you oblige me by telling her that one of your best and newest friends happens to be in the same hotel as her charming self, and that if she gets him to sparkle, he (which is I) will help considerable with copy for 'The Firefly.' Advise me by same post, and the rest of the situation is up to yours faithfully,

"C. K. S."

The letter was posted, and Spencer waited five tiresome days. He saw little or nothing of Helen save at meals. Once he met her on a footpath that runs through a wood by the side of the lake to the little hamlet of Isola, and he was minded to raise his hat, as he would have done to any other woman in the hotel whom he encountered under similar circumstances; but she deliberately looked away, and his intended courtesy must have passed unheeded.

As he sedulously avoided any semblance of dogging her footsteps, he could not know how she was being persecuted by de la Vere, Vavasour, and one or two other men of like habit. That knowledge was yet to come. Consequently he deemed her altogether too prudish, and was so out of patience with her that he and Stampa went off for a two days' climb by way of the Muretto Pass to Chiareggio and back to Sils-Maria over the Fex glacier.

Footsore and tired, but thoroughly converted to the marvels of the high Alps, he reached the Kursaal side by side with the postman who brought the chief English mail about six o'clock each evening.

He waited with an eager crowd of residents while the hall porter sorted the letters. There were some for him from America, and one from London in a handwriting that was strange to him. But he had quick eyes, and he saw that a letter addressed to Miss Helen Wynton, in the flamboyant envelope of "The Firefly," bore the same script.

Mackenzie had risen to the occasion. He even indulged in a classical joke. "There is something in the name of Helen that attracts," he said. "Were it not for the lady whose face drew a thousand ships to Ilium, we should never have heard of Paris, or Troy, or the heel of Achilles, and all these would be greatly missed."

"And I should never have heard of Mackenzie or Maloja," thought Spencer, sinking into a chair and looking about to learn whether or not the girl would find her letter before he went to dress for dinner. He was sure she knew his name. Perhaps when she read the editor's note, she too would search the spacious lounge with those fine eyes of hers for the man described therein. If that were so, he meant to go to her instantly, discuss the strangeness of the coincidence that led to two of Mackenzie's friends being at the hotel at the same time, and suggest that they should dine together.

The project seemed feasible, and it was decidedly pleasant in perspective. He longed to compare notes with her,—to tell her the quaint stories of the hills related to him by Stampa in a medley of English, French, Italian, and German; perhaps to plan delightful trips to the fairyland in company.

People began to clear away from the hall porter's table; yet Helen remained invisible. He could hardly have missed her; but to make certain he rose and glanced at the few remaining letters. Yes, "The Firefly's" gaudy imprint still gleamed at him. He turned way, disappointed. After his long tramp and a night in a weird Italian inn, a bath was imperative, and the boom of the dressing gong was imminent.

He was crossing the hall toward the elevator when he heard her voice.

"I am so glad you are keen on an early climb," she was saying, with a new note of confidence that stirred him strangely. "I have been longing to leave the sign boards and footpaths far behind, but I felt rather afraid of going to the Forno for the first time with a guide. You see, I know nothing about mountaineering, and you can put me up to all the dodges beforehand."

"Show you the ropes, in fact," agreed the man with her, Mark Bower.

Spencer was so completely taken by surprise that he could only stare at the two as though they were ghosts. They had entered the hotel together, and had apparently been out for a walk. Helen picked up her letter and held it carelessly in her hand while she continued to talk with Bower. Her pleasurable excitement was undeniable. She regarded her companion as a friend, and was evidently overjoyed at his presence. Spencer banged into the elevator, astonished the attendant and two other occupants by the savagery of his command, "Au deuxieme, vite!" and paced through a long corridor with noisy clatter of hob-nailed boots.

He was in a rare fret and fume when he sat down to dinner alone. Bower was at Helen's table. It was brightened by rare flowers not often seen in sterile Maloja. A bottle of champagne rested in an ice bucket by his side. He had brought with him the atmosphere of London, of the pleasant life that London offers to those who can buy her favors. Truly this Helen, all unconsciously, had not only found the heel of a modern Achilles, but was wounding him sorely. For now Spencer knew that he wanted to see her frank eyes smiling into his as they were smiling into Bower's, and, no matter what turn events took, a sinister element had been thrust into a harmless idyl by this man's arrival.



CHAPTER VII

SOME SKIRMISHING

Later, the American saw the two sitting in the hall. They were chatting with the freedom of old friends. Helen's animated face showed that the subject of their talk was deeply interesting. She was telling Bower of the slights inflicted on her by the other women; but Spencer interpreted her intent manner as supplying sufficient proof of a stronger emotion than mere friendliness. He was beginning to detest Bower.

It was his habit to decide quickly when two ways opened before him. He soon settled his course now. To remain in the hotel under present conditions involved a loss of self respect, he thought. He went to the bureau, asked for his account, and ordered a carriage to St. Moritz for the morrow's fast train to England.

The manager was politely regretful. "You are leaving us at the wrong time, sir," he said. "Within the next few days we ought to have a midsummer storm, when even the lower hills will be covered with snow. Then, we usually enjoy a long spell of magnificent weather."

"Sorry," said Spencer. "I like the scramble up there," and he nodded in the direction of the Bernina range, "and old Stampa is a gem of a guide; but I can hardly put off any longer some business that needs attention in England. Anyhow, I shall come back, perhaps next month. Stampa says it is all right here in September."

"Our best month, I assure you, and the ideal time to drop down into Italy when you are tired of the mountains."

"I must let it go at that. I intend to fix Stampa so that he can remain here till the end of the season. So you see I mean to return."

"He was very fortunate in meeting you, Mr. Spencer," said the manager warmly.

"Well, it is time he had a slice of luck. I've taken a fancy to the old fellow. One night, in the Forno hut, he told me something of his story. I guess it will please him to stop at the Maloja for awhile."

"He told you about his daughter?" came the tentative question.

"Not all. I am afraid there was no difficulty in filling in the blanks. I heard enough to make me respect him and sympathize with his troubles."

The manager shook his head, with the air of one who recalls that which he would willingly have forgotten. "Such incidents are rare in Switzerland," he said. "I well remember the sensation her death created. She was such a pretty girl. The young men at Pontresina called her 'The Edelweiss' because she was so inaccessible. In fact, poor Stampa had educated her beyond her station, and that is not always good for a woman, especially in these quiet valleys, where knowledge of cattle and garden produce is a better asset than speaking French and playing the piano."

Spencer agreed. He could name other districts where the same rule held good. He stood for a moment in the spacious hall to light a cigar. Involuntarily he glanced at Helen. She met his gaze, and said something to Bower that caused the latter also to turn and look.

"She has read Mackenzie's letter," thought Spencer, taking refuge behind a cloud of smoke. "It will be bad behavior on my part to leave the hotel without making my bow. Shall I go to her now, or wait till morning?"

He reflected that Helen might be out early next day. If he presented his introduction at once, she would probably ask him to sit with her a little while, and then he must become acquainted with Bower. He disliked the notion; but he saw no way out of it, unless indeed Helen treated him with the chilling abruptness she meted out to other men in the hotel who tried to become friendly with her. He was weighing the pros and cons dispassionately, when the English chaplain approached.

"Do you play bridge, Mr. Spencer?" he asked.

"I know the leads, and call 'without' on the least provocation," was the reply.

"You are the very man I am searching for, and I have the authority of the First Book of Samuel in my quest."

"Well, now, that is the last place in which I should expect to find my bridge portrait."

"Don't you remember how Saul's servants asked his permission to 'seek out a man who is a cunning player'? That is exactly what I am doing. Come to the smoking room. There are two other men there, and one is a fellow countryman of yours."

The Rev. Mr. Hare was a genial soul, a Somersetshire vicar who took his annual holiday by accepting a temporary position in some Alpine village where there was an English church. He did not dream that he was acting the part of Hermes, messenger of the gods, at that moment, for indeed his appearance on the scene just then changed the whole trend of Spencer's actions.

"What a delightful place this is!" he went on as they walked together through a long corridor. "But what is the matter with the people? They don't mix. I would not have believed that there were so many prigs in the British Isles."

Some such candid opinion had occurred to Spencer; but, being an American, he thought that perhaps he might be mistaken. "The English character is somewhat adaptable to environment, I have heard. That is why you send out such excellent colonists," he said.

"Doesn't that go rather to prove that everybody here should be hail fellow well met?"

"Not at all. They take their pose from the Alps,—snow, glaciers, hard rock, you know,—that is the subtlety of it."

The vicar laughed. "You have given me a new point of view," he said. "Some of them are slippery customers too. Yes, one might carry the parallel a long way. But here we are. Now, mind you cut me as a partner. I have tried the others, and found them severely critical—as bridge players. You look a stoic."

The vicar had his wish. Spencer and he opposed a man from Pittsburg, named Holt, and Dunston, an Englishman.

While the latter was shuffling the cards for Hare's deal he said something that took one, at least, of his hearers by surprise. "Bower has turned up, I see. What has brought him to the Engadine at this time of year I can't guess, unless perhaps he is interested in a pretty face."

"At this time of the year," repeated Spencer. "Isn't this the season?"

"Not for him. He used to be a famous climber; but he has given it up since he waxed fat and prosperous. I have met him once or twice at St. Moritz in the winter. Otherwise, he usually shows up in the fashionable resorts in August,—Ostend, or Trouville, or, if he is livery, Vichy or Aix-les-Bains,—anywhere but this quiet spot. Bower likes excitement too. He often opens a thousand pound bank at baccarat, whereas people are shocked in Maloja at seeing Hare play bridge at tenpence a hundred."

"I leave it, partner," broke in the vicar, to whom the game was the thing.

"No trumps," said Spencer, without giving the least heed to his cards. It was true his eyes were resting on the ace, king, and queen of spades; but his mind was tortured by the belief that by his fantastic conceit in sending Helen to this Alpine fastness he had delivered her bound to the vultures.

"Double no trumps," said Dunston, gloating over the possession of a long suit of hearts and three aces. Hare looked anxious, and Spencer suddenly awoke to the situation.

"Satisfied," he said.

Holt led the three of hearts, and Spencer spread his cards on the table with the gravity of a Sioux chief. In addition to the three high spades he held six others.

"Really!" gasped the parson, "a most remarkable declaration!"

Yet there was an agitated triumph in his voice that was not pleasant hearing for Dunston, who took the trick with the ace of hearts and led the lowest of a sequence to the queen.

"Got him!" panted Hare, producing the king.

The rest was easy. The vicar played a small spade and scored ninety-six points without any further risk.

"It is magnificent; but it is not bridge," said the man from Pittsburg. Dunston simply glowered.

"Partner," demanded Hare timidly, "may I ask why you called 'no trumps' on a hand like that?"

"Thought I would give you a chance of distinguishing yourself," replied Spencer. "Besides, that sort of thing rattles your opponents at the beginning of a game. Keep your nerve now, padre, and you have 'em in a cleft stick."

As it happened, Holt made a "no trump" declaration on a very strong hand; but Spencer held seven clubs headed by the ace and king.

He doubled. Holt redoubled. Spencer doubled again.

Hare flushed somewhat. "Allow me to say that I am very fond of bridge; but I cannot take part in a game that savors of gambling, even for low stakes," he broke in.

"Shall we let her go at forty-eight points a trick?" Spencer asked.

"Yep!" snapped Holt. "Got all the clubs?"

"Not all—sufficient, perhaps."

He played the ace. Dunston laid the queen and knave on the table. Spencer scored the winning trick before his adversary obtained an opening.

"You have a backbone of cast steel," commented Dunston, who was an iron-master. "Do you play baccarat?" he went on, with curious eagerness.

"I regret to state that my education was completed in a Western mining camp."

"Will you excuse the liberty, and perhaps Mr. Hare won't listen for a moment?—but I will finance you in three banks of a thousand each, either banking or punting, if you promise to take on Bower. I can arrange it easily. I say this because you personally may not care to play for high sums."

The suggestion was astounding, coming as it did from a stranger; but Spencer merely said:

"You don't like Bower, then?"

"That is so. I have business relations with him occasionally, and there he is all that could be wished. But I have seen him clean out more than one youngster ruthlessly,—force the play to too high stakes, I mean. I think you could take his measure. Anyhow, I am prepared to back you."

"I'm leaving here to-morrow."

"Ah, well, we may have another opportunity. If so, my offer holds."

"Guess you haven't heard that Spencer is the man who bored a tunnel through the Rocky Mountains?" said Holt.

"No. You must tell me about it. Sorry, Mr. Hare, I am stopping the game."

Spencer continued to have amazing good fortune, and he played with skill, but without any more fireworks. At the close of the sitting the vicar said cheerfully:

"You are not a ladies' man, Mr. Spencer. You know the old proverb,—lucky at cards, unlucky in love? But let me hope that it does not apply in your case."

"Talking about a ladies' man, who is the girl your friend Bower dined with?" asked Holt. "She has been in the hotel several days; but she didn't seem to be acquainted with anybody in particular until he blew in this afternoon."

"She is a Miss Helen Wynton," said the vicar. "I like her very much from what little I have seen of her. She attended both services on Sunday, and I happen to be aware of the fact that she was at mass in the Roman church earlier. I wanted her to play the harmonium next Sunday; but she declined, and gave me her reasons too."

"May I ask what they were?" inquired Spencer.

"Well, speaking in confidence, they were grievously true. Some miserable pandering to Mrs. Grundy has set the other women against her; so she declined to thrust herself into prominence. I tried to talk her out of it, but failed."

"Who is Mrs. Grundy, anyhow?" growled Holt.

The others laughed.

"She is the Medusa of modern life," explained the vicar. "She turns to stone those who gaze on her. Most certainly she petrifies all good feeling and Christian tolerance. Why, I actually heard a woman whose conduct is not usually governed by what I hold to be good taste sneer at Miss Wynton this evening. 'The murder is out now,' she said. 'Bower's presence explains everything.' Yet I am able to state that Miss Wynton was quite unprepared for his arrival. By chance I was standing on the steps when he drove up to the hotel, and it was perfectly clear from the words they used that neither was aware that the other was in Maloja."

Spencer leaned over toward the iron-master. "Tell you what," he said; "I've changed my mind about the trip to England to-morrow. Get up that game with Bower. I'll stand the racket myself unless you want to go half shares."

"Done! I should like to have an interest in it. Not that I am pining for Bower's money, and it may be that he will win ours; but I am keen on giving him a sharp run. At Nice last January not a soul in the Casino would go Banco when he opened a big bank. They were afraid of him."

While he was speaking, Dunston's shrewd eyes dwelt on the younger man's unmoved face. He wondered what had caused this sudden veering of purpose. It was certainly not the allurement of heavy gambling, for Spencer had declined the proposal as coolly as he now accepted it. Being a man of the world, he thought he could peer beneath the mask. To satisfy himself, he harked back to the personal topic.

"By the way, does anyone know who Miss Wynton is?" he said. "That inveterate gossip, Mrs. Vavasour, who can vouch for every name in the Red Book, says she is a lady journalist."

"That, at any rate, is correct," said the vicar. "In fact, Miss Wynton herself told me so."

"Jolly fine girl, whatever she is. To give Bower his due, he has always been a person of taste."

"I have reason to believe," said Spencer, "that Miss Wynton's acquaintance with Mr. Bower is of the slightest."

His words were slow and clear. Dunston, sure now that his guess was fairly accurate, hastened to efface an unpleasant impression.

"Of course, I only meant that if Bower is seen talking to any woman, it may be taken for granted that she is a pretty one," he explained. "But who's for a drink? Perhaps we shall meet our expected opponent in the bar, Mr. Spencer."

"I have some letters to write. Fix that game for to-morrow or next day, and I'll be on hand."

Dunston and Holt paid the few shillings they owed, and went out.

Hare did not move. He looked anxious, almost annoyed. "It is exceedingly ridiculous how circumstances pass beyond a man's control occasionally," he protested. "Am I right in assuming that until this evening neither Bower nor Dunston was known to you, Mr. Spencer?"

"Absolutely correct, vicar. I have never yet spoken to Bower, and you heard all that passed between Dunston and myself."

"Then my harmless invitation to you to join in a game at cards has led directly to an arrangement for play at absurdly high figures?"

"It seems to me, Mr. Hare, that Bower's tracks and mine are destined to cross in more ways than one in the near future," said Spencer coolly.

But the vicar was not to be switched away from the new thought that was troubling him. "I will not ask what you mean," he said, gazing steadfastly at the American. "My chief concern is the outcome of my share in this evening's pleasant amusement. I cannot shut my ears to the fact that you have planned the loss or gain of some thousands of pounds on the turn of a card at baccarat."