o pick and choose the words that would
convey in full measure her detestation of the American. For she hated
him--yes, hatred alone was satisfying. She despised her own heart
because it whispered a protest. Yet she feared him too. It was from
him that she fled. She admitted this to her honest mind while she
watched the spreading radiance of the new day. She feared the candor
of his steady eyes more than the wiles and hypocrisies of Bower and
her false friend, Millicent. By a half miraculous insight into the
history of recent events, she saw that Bower had followed her to
Switzerland with evil intent.

But the discovery embittered her the more against Spencer, who had
lured her there deliberately, than against Bower who knew of it, nor
scrupled to use the knowledge as best it marched with his designs. It
was nothing to her, she told herself, that Spencer no less than Bower
had renounced his earlier purpose, and was ready to marry her. She
still quivered with anger at the thought that she had fallen so
blindly into the toils. Even though she accepted Mackenzie's
astounding commission, she might have guessed that there was some
ignoble element underlying it. She felt now that it was possible to be
prepared,--to scrutinize occurrences more closely, to hold herself
aloof from compromising incidents. The excursion to the Forno, the
manifest interest she displayed in both men, the concealment of her
whereabouts from friends in London, her stiff lipped indifference to
the opinion of other residents in the hotel,--these things, trivial
individually, united into a strong self indictment.

As for Spencer, though she meant, above all things, to avoid meeting
him, and hoped that he was now well on his way to the wide world
beyond Maloja, she would never forgive him--no, never!

"I am sorry to hurry you, _signora_, but there is a bit of really bad
snow on the Sella Pass," urged Pietro apologetically at her shoulder,
and she reentered the hut at once, sitting down to that which she
deemed to be her last meal on the Swiss side of the Upper Engadine.

It was in a hotel at St. Moritz that she had settled her route with
the aid of a map and a guidebook. When, on that day of great
happenings, she quitted the Kursaal-Maloja, she stipulated that the
utmost secrecy should be observed as to her departure. Her boxes and
portmanteau were brought from her room by the little used exit she had
discovered soon after her arrival. A closed carriag