rine when I proceeded to spoil three successive ties in the
tying.

Yet I can only repeat that I felt absolutely "proof" against the real
cause of my solicitude. It is the most delightful feeling where a
handsome woman is concerned. The judgment is not warped by passion or
clouded by emotion; you see the woman as she is, not as you wish to see
her, and if she disappoint it does not matter. You are not left to
choose between systematic self-deception and a humiliating admission of
your mistake. The lady has not been placed upon an impossible pedestal,
and she has not toppled down. In this case the lady started at the most
advantageous disadvantage; every admirable quality, her candour, her
courage, her spirited independence, her evident determination to piece a
broken life together again and make the best of it, told doubly in her
favour to me with my special knowledge of her past. It would be too much
to say that I was deeply interested; but Mrs. Lascelles had inspired me
with a certain sympathy and dispassionate regard. Cultivated she was
not, in the conventional sense, but she knew more than can be imbibed
from books. She knew life at first hand, had drained the cup for
herself, and yet could savour the lees. Not that she enlarged any
further on her own past. Mrs. Lascelles was never a great talker, like
Catherine; but she was certainly a woman to whom one could talk. And
talk to her I did thenceforward, with a conscientious conviction that I
was doing my duty, and only an occasional qualm for its congenial
character, while Bob listened with a wondering eye, or went his own way
without a word.

It is easy to criticise my conduct now. It would have been difficult to
act otherwise at the time. I am speaking of the evening after my walk
with Mrs. Lascelles, of the next day when it rained, and now of my third
night at the hotel. The sky had cleared. The glass was high. There was a
finer edge than ever on the silhouetted mountains against the stars. It
appeared that Bob and Mrs. Lascelles had talked of taking their lunch to
the Findelen Glacier on the next fine day, for he came up and reminded
her of it as she sat with me in the glazed veranda after dinner. I had
seen him standing alone under the stars a few minutes before: so this
was the result of his cogitation. But in his manner there was nothing
studied, much less awkward, and his smile even included me, though he
had not spoken to me alone all day.

"Oh, no, I had