b's answer showed that it was
open to misconstruction.

"Some people climb," said he; "you'll know them by their noses. The
glaciers are almost as bad, though, aren't they, Mrs. Lascelles? Lots of
people potter about the glaciers. It's rather sport in the serracs;
you've got to rope. But you'll find lots more loafing about the place
all day, reading Tauchnitz novels, and watching people on the Matterhorn
through the telescope. That's the sort of thing, isn't it, Mrs.
Lascelles?"

She also had misunderstood the drift of my unlucky question. But there
was nothing disingenuous in her reply. It reminded me of her eyes, as I
had seen them by the light of the first match.

"Mr. Evers doesn't say that he is a climber himself, Captain Clephane;
but he is a very keen one, and so am I. We are both beginners, so we
have begun together. It's such fun. We do some little thing every day;
to-day we did the Schwarzee. You won't be any wiser, and the real
climbers wouldn't call it climbing, but it means three thousand feet
first and last. To-morrow we are going to the Monte Rosa hut. There is
no saying where we shall end up, if this weather holds."

In this fashion Mrs. Lascelles not only made me a contemptuous present
of information which I had never sought, but tacitly rebuked poor Bob
for his gratuitous attempt at concealment. Clearly, they had nothing to
conceal; and the hotel talk was neither more nor less than hotel talk.
There was, nevertheless, a certain self-consciousness in the attitude of
either (unless I grossly misread them both) which of itself afforded
some excuse for the gossips in my own mind.

Yet I did not know; every moment gave me a new point of view. On my
remarking, genuinely enough, that I only wished I could go with them,
Bob Evers echoed the wish so heartily that I could not but believe that
he meant what he said. On his side, in that case, there could be
absolutely nothing. And yet, again, when Mrs. Lascelles had left us, as
she did ere long in the easiest and most natural manner, and when we had
started a last cigarette together, then once more I was not so sure of
him.

"That's rather a handsome woman," said I, with perhaps more than the
authority to which my years entitled me. But I fancied it would "draw"
poor Bob. And it did.

"Rather handsome!" said he, with a soft little laugh not altogether
complimentary to me. "Yes, I should almost go as far myself. Still I
don't see how _you_ know; you haven