‘So would I,’ said Mr Glascock.  ’I’m glad we can agree about one thing.’

The two gentlemen agreed to walk up the mountain together, and with some trouble induced the conductor to permit them to do so.  Why conductors of diligences should object to such relief to their horses the ordinary Englishman can hardly understand.  But in truth they feel so deeply the responsibility which attaches itself to their shepherding of their sheep, that they are always fearing lest some poor lamb should go astray on the mountain side.  And though the road be broad and very plainly marked, the conductor never feels secure that his passenger will find his way safely to the summit.  He likes to know that each of his flock is in his right place, and disapproves altogether of an erratic spirit.  But Mr Glascock at last prevailed, and the two men started together up the mountain.  When the permission has been once obtained the walker may be sure that his guide and shepherd will not desert him.

‘Of course I know,’ said Trevelyan, when the third twist up the mountain had been overcome, ’that people talk about me and my wife.  It is a part of the punishment for the mistake that one makes.’

‘It is a sad affair altogether.’

’The saddest in the world.  Lady Milborough has no doubt spoken to you about it.’

‘Well yes; she has.’

’How could she help it?  I am not such a fool as to suppose that people are to hold their tongues about me more than they do about others.  Intimate as she is with you, of course she has spoken to you.’

‘I was in hopes that something might have been done by this time.’

’Nothing has been done.  Sometimes I think I shall put an end to myself, it makes me so wretched.’

‘Then why don’t you agree to forget and forgive and have done with it?’

‘That is so easily said, so easily said.’  After this they walked on in silence for a considerable distance.  Mr Glascock was not anxious to talk about Trevelyan’s wife, but he did wish to ask a question or two about Mrs Trevelyan’s sister, if only this could be done without telling too much of his own secret.  ’There’s nothing I think so grand as walking up a mountain,’ he said after a while.

‘It’s all very well,’ said Trevelyan, in a tone which seemed to imply that to him in his present miserable condition all recreations, exercises, and occupations were mere leather and prunella.

’I don’t mean, you know, in the Alpine Club way, said Glascock.  ’I’m too old and too stiff for that.  But when the path is good, and the air not too cold, and when it is neither snowing, nor thawing, nor raining, and when the sun isn’t hot, and you’ve got plenty of time, and know that you can stop any moment you like and be pushed up by a carriage, I do think walking up a mountain is very fine if you’ve got proper shoes, and a good stick, and it isn’t too soon after dinner.  There’s nothing like the air of Alps.’  And Mr Glascock renewed his pace, and stretched himself against the hill at the rate of three miles an hour.