“And what do you do with yourself up here all day?  I mean you hale people; of course, I can only potter in the sun.”

The question, perhaps, was better in intention than in tact.  I did not mean them to take it to themselves, but Bob’s answer showed that it was open to misconstruction.

“Some people climb,” said he; “you’ll know them by their noses.  The glaciers are almost as bad, though, aren’t they, Mrs. Lascelles?  Lots of people potter about the glaciers.  It’s rather sport in the serracs; you’ve got to rope.  But you’ll find lots more loafing about the place all day, reading Tauchnitz novels, and watching people on the Matterhorn through the telescope.  That’s the sort of thing, isn’t it, Mrs. Lascelles?”

She also had misunderstood the drift of my unlucky question.  But there was nothing disingenuous in her reply.  It reminded me of her eyes, as I had seen them by the light of the first match.

“Mr. Evers doesn’t say that he is a climber himself, Captain Clephane; but he is a very keen one, and so am I. We are both beginners, so we have begun together.  It’s such fun.  We do some little thing every day; to-day we did the Schwarzee.  You won’t be any wiser, and the real climbers wouldn’t call it climbing, but it means three thousand feet first and last.  To-morrow we are going to the Monte Rosa hut.  There is no saying where we shall end up, if this weather holds.”

In this fashion Mrs. Lascelles not only made me a contemptuous present of information which I had never sought, but tacitly rebuked poor Bob for his gratuitous attempt at concealment.  Clearly, they had nothing to conceal; and the hotel talk was neither more nor less than hotel talk.  There was, nevertheless, a certain self-consciousness in the attitude of either (unless I grossly misread them both) which of itself afforded some excuse for the gossips in my own mind.

Yet I did not know; every moment gave me a new point of view.  On my remarking, genuinely enough, that I only wished I could go with them, Bob Evers echoed the wish so heartily that I could not but believe that he meant what he said.  On his side, in that case, there could be absolutely nothing.  And yet, again, when Mrs. Lascelles had left us, as she did ere long in the easiest and most natural manner, and when we had started a last cigarette together, then once more I was not so sure of him.

“That’s rather a handsome woman,” said I, with perhaps more than the authority to which my years entitled me.  But I fancied it would “draw” poor Bob.  And it did.

“Rather handsome!” said he, with a soft little laugh not altogether complimentary to me.  “Yes, I should almost go as far myself.  Still I don’t see how you know; you haven’t so much as seen her, my dear fellow.”

“Haven’t we been walking up and down outside this lighted veranda for the last ten minutes?”

Bob emitted a pitying puff.  “Wait till you see her in the sunlight!  There’s not many of them can stand it, as they get it up here.  But she can—­like anything!”