proverbially
honest. The unlucky driver had tried to be friendly; his fault was due
to an excess of zeal; and each time she declined the proffered help
his furrowed face brightened. If she did not reach the hotel until
midnight she was determined to go there in that vehicle, and in none
other.

The accident threw her late, but only by some two hours. Instead of
arriving at Maloja in brilliant sunshine, it was damp and chilly when
she entered the hotel. A bank of mist had been carried over the summit
of the pass by a southwesterly wind. Long before the carriage crawled
round the last great bend in the road the glorious panorama of lake
and mountains was blotted out of sight. The horses seemed to be
jogging on through a luminous cloud, so dense that naught was visible
save a few yards of roadway and the boundary wall or stone posts on
the left side, where lay the lake. The brightness soon passed, as the
hurrying fog wraiths closed in on each other. It became bitterly cold
too, and it was with intense gladness that Helen finally stepped from
the outer gloom into a glass haven of warmth and light that formed a
species of covered-in veranda in front of the hotel.

She was about to pay the driver, having added to the agreed sum half
the cost of the broken wheel by way of a solatium, when another
carriage drove up from the direction of St. Moritz.

She fancied that the occupant, a young man whom she had never seen
before, glanced at her as though he knew her. She looked again to make
sure; but by that time his eyes were turned away, so he had evidently
discovered his mistake. Still, he seemed to take considerable
interest in her carriage, and Helen, ever ready to concede the most
generous interpretation of doubtful acts, assumed that he had heard
of the accident by some means, and was on the lookout for her.

It would indeed have been a fortunate thing for Helen had some Swiss
fairy whispered the news of her mishap in Spencer's ears during the
long drive up the mist laden valley. Then, at least, he might have
spoken to her, and used the informal introduction to make her further
acquaintance on the morrow. But the knowledge was withheld from him.
No hint of it was even flashed through space by that wireless
telegraphy which has existed between kin souls ever since men and
women contrived to raise human affinities to a plane not far removed
from the divine.

He had small store of German, but he knew enough to be perplexed