us wall of sheer rock
rising behind the ringed town and its fortress; and I saw, soon after
starting, that we must be bound for the mountain with the silken skein
of road, which I had gazed at in wonder from my porthole. We had not
long left Cattaro, when our way began to mount in long zigzags, doubling
back again and again upon itself. Presently we could look down upon the
town, prone at the foot of its fortified hill on the very edge of the
sea, which as we climbed, assumed the shape and colour of a great
shimmering blue silk sleeve.

Mountains towered all around us, mountains in every direction as far as
the eye could reach, many crowned by low, green forts, connected with
the lower world by the lacings of thread-like roads.

Still we mounted, the car going well and the Prince driving in silence.
Though the gradient was steep--sometimes so steep as to be terrible for
horses--we seemed to travel so fast that it was surprising to find
ourselves apparently no nearer the mountain-tops than when we started.
Though we gazed down so far that all things on the sea level had shrunk
into nothingness, and the big warship we had seen in coming was no
larger than a beetle, we gazed still farther up to the line where sky
and mountain met. And always, there were the grey-white, zigzag lines
scored on the face of the sheer rock.

I longed for some one to talk with, some one sympathetic to exclaim to;
in fact, I wished I were driving up this magnificent, this appalling
road, beside the Chauffeulier instead of in Prince Dalmar-Kalm's
tonneau. I wondered that Aunt Kathryn--usually so impulsive--could
restrain herself here, and expected at any moment to have her turn to
me, our differences forgotten. But no, she neither moved nor spoke, and
I realized how angry she must be with me, to visit her vexation upon
herself, and the Prince also.

I had thought the Col di Tenda wonderful, and the way down to Bellagio
over the mountains still more thrilling; but here, they were dwarfed
into utter insignificance. I could have imagined nothing like this feat
of engineering, nothing so wild, so majestic as the ever-changing views
from these incredible heights.

My respect for Schloss Hrvoya and its environment increased with every
ascending mile; but the distance was proving itself so great that I did
not see how it would be possible for the Prince to keep his promise, and
get us back to Cattaro before eight. And we had left summer warmth as
f