to her brother and was watched through the whiffs of a
pipe far up the valley, guiltless of any consciousness of producing an
impression. But her mind was with the stranger sufficiently to cause her
to say to Chillon, at the close of a dispute between him and Anton on
the interesting subject of the growth of the horns of chamois: 'Have we
been quite kind to that gentleman?'

Chillon looked over his shoulder. 'He's there still; he's fond of
solitude. And, Carin, my dear, don't give your hand when you are meeting
or parting with people it's not done.'

His uninstructed sister said: 'Did you not like him?'

She was answered with an 'Oh,' the tone of which balanced lightly on the
neutral line. 'Some of the ideas he has are Lord Fleetwood's, I hear,
and one can understand them in a man of enormous wealth, who doesn't
know what to do with himself and is dead-sick of flattery; though it
seems odd for an English nobleman to be raving about Nature. Perhaps
it's because none else of them does.'

'Lord Fleetwood loves our mountains, Chillon?'

'But a fellow who probably has to make his way in the world!--and he
despises ambition!'... Chillon dropped him. He was antipathetic to
eccentrics, and his soldierly and social training opposed the profession
of heterodox ideas: to have listened seriously to them coming from the
mouth of an unambitious bootmaker's son involved him in the absurdity.
He considered that there was no harm in the lad, rather a commendable
sort of courage and some notion of manners; allowing for his ignorance
of the convenable in putting out his hand to take a young lady's, with
the plea of thanking her. He hoped she would be more on her guard.

Carinthia was sure she had the name of the nobleman wishing to bestow
his title upon the beautiful Henrietta. Lord Fleetwood! That slender
thread given her of the character of her brother's rival who loved the
mountains was woven in her mind with her passing experience of the
youth they had left behind them, until the two became one, a highly
transfigured one, and the mountain scenery made him very threatening
to her brother. A silky haired youth, brown-eyed, unconquerable
in adversity, immensely rich, fond of solitude, curled, decorated,
bejewelled by all the elves and gnomes of inmost solitude, must have
marvellous attractions, she feared. She thought of him so much, that her
humble spirit conceived the stricken soul of the woman as of necessity
the pursuer; as sh