ich in tender
memories. And yet he knew that its undulating blueness hid hard,
relentless rock, as unyielding as the very hand of death itself.

"Love," he said slowly, his heart swelling with the deep sense of his
loss, "love should lead to happiness and peace--not to conflict,
murder, and sudden death."

And he lay there pondering, until at last, as always in the end, his
better genius triumphed. And when the evening sunshine turned the
windows of the distant hamlets into tongues of flame and set the
waters in the little bay a-dancing, he rowed slowly back to the hotel,
his own resourceful English self again.

Far up on the side of the Buergenstock a dim light shone--a faint glow,
until a cloud bank, stealing ever nearer, nearer, crept between like
some soft curtain, and the silent mystery of the evening fell upon the
lake, and wrapped the mountains in a velvet pall.

CHAPTER IV

Nearly a week had passed since Paul reached the Mecca of his
pilgrimage. Other guests at the hotel had seen little of him, except
as they glimpsed him of a morning as he made an early start to some
favourite haunt; or again as he returned at night-fall, to pass
quickly through the chattering groups upon the terrace or about the
hall and retire to his suite, where usually his dinner was served in
solitary state.

His resolutely maintained seclusion was so marked that even his
English friends, accustomed as they were to the exclusiveness of their
kind, commented on it. Barclay openly lamented, for, as he said, "Was
not Sir Paul the best of company when he chose, and why come here to
this gay garden spot to mope?"

Daisy Livingstone, the American girl, from that meeting in the train
had found a peculiar attraction in her big Englishman, as she called
Verdayne playfully when speaking of him to her friends. She knew now,
of course, that he was the famous Sir Paul Verdayne, the personage so
prominent in British public affairs. And she remembered, too, with a
woman's quick intuition for a heart forlorn, Paul's sad, almost
melancholy face.

One balmy evening, as she was slowly strolling back and forth beside
her mother on the terrace, "Mother," she said in a low voice, "why
should Sir Paul look so _triste_? He has everything, apparently, that
a man could wish to make him happy--health, wealth, and a success that
can be the result only of his own efforts. And yet he is not happy.
What hidden sorrow can he have--some grief, I am sure