after some tragic
experience. At least this was the impression which flashed into my
mind, with the one look I surprised before lashes hid its secret; but
in a moment I was laughing at myself. Ridiculous to have such a
thought in connection with a slip of a boy, seventeen at most! I
lingered over my breakfast, so that the Brat have finished his
sightseeing and got away, before my tour of the Hospice began.

He and I had had the table to ourselves at first, but I sat so long
that others came in, evidently persons who had spent the night at the
monastery. There was a Russian family, of so many daughters that I
wondered their parents had found names for them all; a couple of
German women in plaid blouses so terrible that they set me
speculating. Had the material been chosen by their husbands, with the
view of alienating all masculine admiration, as a Japanese girl, when
married, blackens her teeth? Or had the ladies inflicted the frightful
things upon themselves, by way of penance for some grievous sin? I
should have liked to ask, especially as one of the wearers was very
pretty, with a large, madonna loveliness. But under my dreaming eyes,
she began eating honey with her knife, and I sprang from the table
hastily. As I paused, I heard two stolid Cockneys asking each other
why the--dickens they had come to this "beastly, cold, God-forsaken
hole, with nothing but a lot of ugly mountains to see. There was
better sport in Oxford Street." I should not have considered it murder
if I had killed them where they sat, but I refrained, rather than soil
my hands. And after all, if a primrose on a river's brim, but a yellow
primrose was to them, what did it matter to me?

I visited the _bibliotheque_, which was haunted by a fragrance
intoxicating to booklovers, of dead centuries, leather bindings, and
parchment. I saw the piano given by the King when he was Prince of
Wales; the fine collection of coins and early Roman remains found in
the neighbourhood of the monastery; I dropped a louis into the box of
offerings in the chapel, and then was taken by a mild-eyed,
frail-looking monk to see some of the rooms allotted to guests at the
Hospice. Seeing them, I was inclined to wish that I had pushed on
through the darkness last night, and reached this mountain-top to
sleep. I liked the wainscoted walls, the white, canopied beds, but
most of all, I liked the deep-set windows with their view of the
silent lake, asleep in the bosom of the mou