actions, 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 shamelessly,
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.