Yet I can only repeat that I felt absolutely “proof” against the real cause of my solicitude.  It is the most delightful feeling where a handsome woman is concerned.  The judgment is not warped by passion or clouded by emotion; you see the woman as she is, not as you wish to see her, and if she disappoint it does not matter.  You are not left to choose between systematic self-deception and a humiliating admission of your mistake.  The lady has not been placed upon an impossible pedestal, and she has not toppled down.  In this case the lady started at the most advantageous disadvantage; every admirable quality, her candour, her courage, her spirited independence, her evident determination to piece a broken life together again and make the best of it, told doubly in her favour to me with my special knowledge of her past.  It would be too much to say that I was deeply interested; but Mrs. Lascelles had inspired me with a certain sympathy and dispassionate regard.  Cultivated she was not, in the conventional sense, but she knew more than can be imbibed from books.  She knew life at first hand, had drained the cup for herself, and yet could savour the lees.  Not that she enlarged any further on her own past.  Mrs. Lascelles was never a great talker, like Catherine; but she was certainly a woman to whom one could talk.  And talk to her I did thenceforward, with a conscientious conviction that I was doing my duty, and only an occasional qualm for its congenial character, while Bob listened with a wondering eye, or went his own way without a word.

It is easy to criticise my conduct now.  It would have been difficult to act otherwise at the time.  I am speaking of the evening after my walk with Mrs. Lascelles, of the next day when it rained, and now of my third night at the hotel.  The sky had cleared.  The glass was high.  There was a finer edge than ever on the silhouetted mountains against the stars.  It appeared that Bob and Mrs. Lascelles had talked of taking their lunch to the Findelen Glacier on the next fine day, for he came up and reminded her of it as she sat with me in the glazed veranda after dinner.  I had seen him standing alone under the stars a few minutes before:  so this was the result of his cogitation.  But in his manner there was nothing studied, much less awkward, and his smile even included me, though he had not spoken to me alone all day.

“Oh, no, I hadn’t forgotten, Mr. Evers.  I am looking forward to it,” said my companion, with a smile of her own to which the most jealous swain could not have taken exception.

Bob Evers looked hard at me.

“You’d better come, too,” he said.

“It’s probably too far,” said I, quite intending to play second fiddle next day, for it was really Bob’s turn.

“Not for a man who has been up to the Cricket-ground,” he rejoined.

“But it’s dreadfully slippery,” put in Mrs. Lascelles, with a sympathetic glance at my sticks.