Bob. "I'm delighted, personally, of
course."

"Then do you mean to say--you actually told her--I was as much in
earnest as you were?"

Bob Evers smiled openly in my face; it was the only revenge he ever
took; and even it was tempered by the inextinguishable sweetness of
expression and the childlike wide-eyed candour which were Bob's even in
the hour of his humiliation, and will be, one hopes, all his days.

"Not in so many words," he said, "but I am afraid I did tell her in
effect. You see, I took you at your word. I thought it was quite true.
I'm awfully sorry, Duncan. But it really does serve you right!"

I made no answer. I was looking at the suit-case on the bed. Bob seemed
to have lost all interest in his packing. I turned to leave him without
a word.

"I am awfully sorry!" he was the one to say again. I began to wonder
when he would see all round the point, and how it would affect his
feeling (to say nothing of his actions) when he did. Meanwhile it was
Bob who was holding out his hand.

"So am I," I said, taking it.

And for once I, too, was not thinking about myself.

CHAPTER XII

A STERN CHASE

Where had Bob been going, and where was he going now? If these were not
the first questions that I asked myself on coming away from him, they
were at all events among my last thoughts that night, and as it
happened, quite my first next morning. His voice had reached me through
my bedroom window, on the head of a dream about himself. I got up and
looked out; there was Bob Evers seeing the suit-case into the tiny train
which brings your baggage (and yourself, if you like) to the very door
of the Riffel Alp Hotel. Bob did not like and I watched him out of sight
down the winding path threaded by the shining rails. He walked slowly,
head and shoulders bent, it might be with dogged resolve, it might be in
mere depression; there was never a glimpse of his face, nor a backward
glance as he swung round the final corner, with his great-coat over his
arm.

In spite of my curiosity as to his destination, I made no attempt to
discover it for myself, but on consideration I was guilty of certain
inquiries concerning that of Mrs. Lascelles. They had not to be very
exhaustive; she had made no secret of her original plans upon leaving
the Riffel Alp, and they did not appear to have undergone much change. I
myself left the same forenoon, and lay that night amid the smells of
Brigues, after a little tour of its hotels