Now, as the homeward descent began,
chance led the two young people and Miss Madden on ahead.
Thorpe found himself walking beside Lady Cressage.
He had upon his arm her outer wrap, which she said she
would put on presently. To look at the view he must glance
past her face: the profile, under the graceful fur cap,
was so enriched by glowing colour that it was, to his thought,
as if she were blushing.
"How little I thought, a few months ago," he said,
"that we should be mountaineering together!"
"Oh, no one knows a day ahead," she responded, vaguely.
"I had probably less notion of coming to Switzerland
then than you had."
"Then you don't come regularly?"
"I have never seen either Germany or Switzerland before.
I have scarcely been out of England before."
"Why now"--he paused, to think briefly upon his words--"I
took it for granted you were showing Miss Madden around."
"It 's quite the other way about," she answered, with a
cold little laugh. "It is she who is showing me around.
It is her tour. I am the chaperone." Thorpe dwelt upon
the word in his mind. He understood what it meant only
in a way, but he was luminously clear as to the bitterness
of the tone in which it had been uttered.
"No--it didn't seem as if it were altogether--what I
might call--YOUR tour," he ventured.
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