"Oh, no," said Nellie, simply.

"But your husband told me the other day that when you and he were in
Geneva a couple of years ago, the view of Mont Blanc used to--er--upset
you."

"View of Mont Blanc?" Nellie stammered.

Everybody was aware that she and Denry had never been in Switzerland
before, and that their marriage was indeed less than a month old.

"You misunderstood me," said Denry, gruffly. "My wife hasn't been to
Geneva."

"Oh!" drawled Captain Deverax.

His "Oh!" contained so much of insinuation, disdain, and lofty amusement
that Denry blushed, and when Nellie saw her husband's cheek she blushed
in competition and defeated him easily. It was felt that either Denry
had been romancing to the Captain, or that he had been married before,
unknown to his Nellie, and had been "carrying on" at Geneva. The
situation, though it dissolved of itself in a brief space, was awkward.
It discredited the Hotel Beau-Site. It was in the nature of a repulse
for the Hotel Beau-Site (franc a day cheaper than the Metropole) and of
a triumph for the popinjay. The fault was utterly Denry's. Yet he said
to himself:

"I'll be even with that chap."

On the drive home he was silent. The theme of conversation in the
sleighs which did not contain the Countess was that the Captain had
flirted tremendously with the Countess, and that it amounted to an
affair.

IV

Captain Deverax was equally salient in the department of sports. There
was a fair sheet of ice, obtained by cutting into the side of the
mountain, and a very good tobogganing track, about half a mile in length
and full of fine curves, common to the two hotels. Denry's predilection
was for the track. He would lie on his stomach on the little contrivance
which the Swiss call a luge, and which consists of naught but three bits
of wood and two steel-clad runners, and would course down the perilous
curves at twenty miles an hour. Until the Captain came, this was
regarded as dashing, because most people were content to sit on the luge
and travel legs-foremost instead of head-foremost. But the Captain,
after a few eights on the ice, intimated that for the rest no sport was
true sport save the sport of ski-running. He allowed it to be understood
that luges were for infants. He had brought his skis, and these
instruments of locomotion, some six feet in length, made a sensation
among the inexperienced. For when he had strapped them to his feet the
Captain, while stating candi