amelessly, though timidly, as she herself pursued in
imagination the enchanted secret of the mountain-land. She hoped her
brother would not supplicate, for it struck her that the lover who
besieged the lady would forfeit her roaming and hunting fancy.

'I wonder what that gentleman is doing now,' she said to Chillon.

He grimaced slightly, for her sake; he would have liked to inform her,
for the sake of educating her in the customs of the world she was
going to enter, that the word 'gentleman' conveys in English a special
signification.

Her expression of wonder whether they were to meet him again gave
Chillon the opportunity of saying:

'It 's the unlikeliest thing possible--at all events in England.'

'But I think we shall,' said she.

'My dear, you meet people of your own class; you don't meet others.'

'But we may meet anybody, Chillon!'

'In the street. I suppose you would not stop to speak to him in the
street.'

'It would be strange to see him in the street!' Carinthia said.

'Strange or not!'

.... Chillon thought he had said sufficient. She was under his
protectorship, otherwise he would not have alluded to the observance
of class distinctions. He felt them personally in this case because of
their seeming to stretch grotesquely by the pretentious heterodoxy of
the young fellow, whom, nevertheless, thinking him over now that he was
mentioned, he approved for his manliness in bluntly telling his origin
and status.

A chalet supplied them with fresh milk, and the inn of a village on a
perch with the midday meal. Their appetites were princely and swept over
the little inn like a conflagration. Only after clearing it did they
remember the rearward pedestrian, whose probable wants Chillon was urged
by Carthinia to speak of to their host. They pushed on, clambering
up, scurrying down, tramping gaily, till by degrees the chambers
of Carinthia's imagination closed their doors and would no longer
intercommunicate. Her head refused to interest her, and left all
activity to her legs and her eyes, and the latter became unobservant,
except of foot-tracks, animal-like. She felt that she was a fine
machine, and nothing else: and she was rapidly approaching those ladies!

'You will tell them how I walked with you,' she said.

'Your friends over yonder?' said he.

'So that they may not think me so ignorant, brother.' She stumbled on
the helpless word in a hasty effort to cloak her vanity.

He laughed. Her des