“Is Mrs. Evers a religious woman?” asked my companion, her step slowing ever so slightly as we approached.

“Not exactly; but she knows all about it,” I replied.

“And doesn’t believe very much?  Then we shouldn’t hit it off,” exclaimed Mrs. Lascelles, “for I know nothing and believe all I can!  Nevertheless, I’m not going to church again to-day.”

The last words were in a sort of aside, and I afterwards heard that Bob and Mrs. Lascelles had attended the later service together on the previous Sunday; but I guessed almost as much on the spot, and it put out of my head both the unjust assumption of the earlier remark, concerning Catherine, and the contrast between them which Mrs. Lascelles could hardly afford to emphasise.

“Let’s go somewhere else instead—­Zermatt—­or anywhere else you like,” I suggested, eagerly; but we were close to the steps, and before she could reply Bob had taken off his straw hat to Mrs. Lascelles, and flung me a nod.

“How very energetic!” he cried.  “I only hope it’s a true indication of form, for I’ve got a scheme:  instead of putting in another chapel I propose we stroll down to Zermatt for lunch and come back by the train.”

Bob’s proposal was made pointedly to Mrs. Lascelles, and as pointedly excluded me, but she stood between the two of us with a charming smile of good-humoured perplexity.

“Now what am I to say?  Captain Clephane was in the very act of making the same suggestion!”

Bob glared on me for an instant in spite of Eton and all his ancestors.

“We’ll all go together,” I cried before he could speak.  “Why not?”

Nor was this mere unreasoning or good-natured impulse, since Bob could scarcely have pressed his suit in my presence, while I should certainly have done my best to retard it; still, it was rather a relief to me to see him shake his head with some return of his natural grace.

“My idea was to show Mrs. Lascelles the gorge,” said Bob, “but you can do that as well as I can; you can’t miss it; besides, I’ve seen it, and I really ought to stay up here, as a matter of fact, for I’m on the track of a guide for the Matterhorn.”

We looked at him narrowly with one accord, but he betrayed no signs of desperate impulse, only those of “climbing fever,” and I at least breathed again.

“But if you want a guide,” said I, “Zermatt’s full of them.”

“I know,” said he, “but it’s a particular swell I’m after, and he hangs out up here in the season.  They expect him back from a big trip any moment, and I really ought to be on the spot to snap him up.”

So Bob retired, in very fair order after all, and not without his laughing apologies to Mrs. Lascelles; but it was sad to me to note the spurious ring his laugh had now; it was like the death-knell of the simple and the single heart that it had been my lot, if not my mission, to poison and to warp.  But the less said about my odious task, the sooner to its fulfilment, which now seemed close at hand.