' in the ladies' singles you'll be a Queen's Club
champion at six-stone nine--Eh, what?"

Though Vavasour represented a species of inane young man whom Helen
detested, she bore with him because she hungered for the sound of an
English voice in friendly converse this bright morning. At times her
life was lonely enough in London; but she had never felt her isolation
there. The great city appealed to her in all its moods. Her cheerful
yet sensitive nature did not shrink from contact with its hurrying
crowds. The mere sense of aloofness among so many millions of people
brought with it the knowledge that she was one of them, a human atom
plunged into a heedless vortex the moment she passed from her house
into the street.

Here in Maloja things were different. While her own identity was laid
bare, while men and women canvassed her name, her appearance, her
occupation, she was cut off from them by a social wall of their
own contriving. The attitude of the younger women told her that
trespassers were forbidden within that sacred fold. She knew now that
she had done a daring thing--outraged one of the cheap conventions--in
coming alone to this clique-ridden Swiss valley. Better a thousand
times have sought lodgings in some small village inn, and mixed with
the homely folk who journeyed thither on the diligence or tramped
joyously afoot, than strive to win the sympathy of any of these
shallow nonentities of the smart set.

Even while listening to "Georgie's" efforts to win her smiles with
slangy confidences, she saw that Mrs. Vavasour had halted in mid
career, and joined a group of women, evidently a mother and two
daughters, and that she herself was the subject of their talk. She
wondered why. She was somewhat perplexed when the conclave broke up
suddenly, the girls going to the door, Mrs. Vavasour retreating
majestically to the far end of the veranda, and the other elderly
woman drawing a short, fat, red faced man away from a discussion with
another man.

"Jolly place, this," Vavasour was saying. "There's dancin' most
nights. The dowager brigade want the band to play classical music, an'
that sort of rot, you know; but Mrs. de la Vere and the Wragg girls
like a hop, an' we generally arrange things our own way. We'll have a
dance to-night if you wish it; but you must promise to----"

"Georgie," cried the pompous little man, "I want you a minute!"

Vavasour swung round. Evidently he regarded the interruption as "a
beastly