Arabella, "would amount to five millions, if
not more. Only conceive it— FIVE MILLIONS!"

"You will meet with no sympathy from
Lady Castletowers," said the Bishop's wife,
significantly.

"Evidently not. Though, if there were really
a coronet in prospect . . . ."

"I think there is a coronet in prospect," said
Mrs. Bunyon.

Lady Arabella shook her head.

"No more than there is a crown matrimonial,"
said she. "I am a close observer of young
people, and I know quite well what direction the
Earl's inclinations take."

"Indeed!"

"He is over head and ears in love with
Mademoiselle Colonna," said Lady Arabella,
confidentially. "And has been, for years."

"Does Lady Castletowers know it?"

"I think not."

"And do you suppose they are secretly
engaged?"

"Oh dear no! Mademoiselle Colonna, I
believe, discourages his attentions— greatly to her
credit."

"It is a marriage that would be highly
distasteful to Lady Castletowers," observed Mrs.
Bunyon.

"It would break her heart," said Lady
Arabella.

"She is ambitious."

"— and poor. Poor as a mouse."

If Lady Castletowers had not been a Countess,
a Holme-Pierrepoint, and the daughter of an
Earl, Lady Arabella Walkingshaw could scarcely
have forgiven her this fact. She was one of that
large majority who regard poverty as a crime.

In the mean while, Miss Hatherton had found
that Saxon could not only dance, but, when the
first shyness of introduction had worn off, could
actually talk. So she set herself to draw him
out, and his naïveté amused her excessively.

"I don't mean to let you hand me to a seat,
and get rid of me, Mr. Trefalden," she said,
when the quadrille was over, and the dancers
were promenading up and down the hall. "You
must sit down in this quiet little nook, and talk
to me. I want you to tell me ever so much
more about Switzerland."

"I am glad to find any one who cares to hear
about it," said Saxon. "It is a subject of
which I am never weary."

"I dare say not. I only wonder how you
can endure this life of tinsel and glitter after
the liberty of the mountains. Are you not
disgusted with the insincere smiles, and polite
falsehoods of society?"

Saxon looked at her with dismay.

"What do you mean?" he said. "The world
has been very kind to me. I never dreamt that
its smiles were false, or its kindness insincere."

Miss Hatherton laughed.

"You'll find it out, she said, "when you've
lived in it a little longer."

"I hope not. I should be very unhappy if
I thought so."

"Well, then, don't think so. Enjoy your
illusions as long as you can. I have outlived
mine long ago; and I'm sorry for it. But let
us talk of something pleasanter— of Switzerland.
Have you ever hunted the chamois?"

"Hundreds of times."

"How charming! High up, I suppose,
among the snows?"

"Among the snows, along the edges of
precipices, across the glaciers— wherever the
chamois could spring, or the foot of the hunter
follow," replied Saxon, with enthusiasm.

"That's really dangerous sport, is it not?"
asked the heiress.

"It is less dangerous to the practised
mountaineer than to one who is new to the work. But
there can be no real sport without danger."

"Why so?"

"Because sport without danger is mere
slaughter. The risks ought never to be all on
the side of a helpless beast."

"That is just and generous," said Miss
Hatherton, warmly.

Saxon blushed, and looked uncomfortable.

"I have not only been over a glacier, but
down a crevasse, after a chamois, many a time,"
said he, hurriedly. "I shot one this very spring,
as he stood upon an ice-ridge, between two
chasms. I ought not to have done it. I ought
to have waited till he got to a more open spot;
but, having him well within range, I brought
him down. When I reached the spot, however,
there was my chamois wedged half way down
a deep, blue, cruel-looking crevasse— and I had
no alternative but to get him out, or leave him."

"So you cut steps in the ice, as one sees in
the pictures in the Alpine-club books!"

"No— I simply tied the cord that every
mountaineer carries, round the stock of my
rifle— fixed the gun firmly across the mouth of
the chasm— and let myself down. Then I tied
another cord round my chamois, and when I had
reached the top again, I drew him up after me.
Nothing is easier. A child can do it, if he is
used to the ice, and is not afraid. In all glacier
work, it is only the rash and the timid who are
in danger."

"And what other sport do you get?" asked
Miss Hatherton. "Are there any eagles about
the mountains of the Grisons?"

"Not so many as there used to be. I have
not shot more than five or six within these last
three years; but I robbed many an eagle's nest
when I was a boy. Then, you know, we have
the steinbok, and in winter, the wolf; and
sometimes we get the chance of a brown bear."

"Have you ever shot a bear, Mr. Trefalden?"
said Miss Hatherton, intensely interested.

"I have shot two," replied Saxon, with a
flush of boyish pride, "and made sledge-rugs of
their skins. You have never been in Switzerland?"

"Oh yes I have," replied Miss Hatherton;
"but only in the beaten tracks, and under the
custody of a courier, like a maniac with a
keeper."

"Ah, you really know nothing of the country,"
said Saxon, " nor of the people. The Switzerland