Monsieur Pettigrat was a big, broad, uncommon man; he knew that he was uncommon, and dressed accordingly in a cloak and a brigand’s hat; he saw what others did not, and spoke in a manner suitably impressive.

“I will tell you, madame, about your daughter,” he said somberly.  “To me she has a fated look.”

Mrs. Thesiger was a little consoled to think that she had a daughter with a fated look.

“I wonder if others have noticed it,” she said, cheerfully.

“No,” replied Monsieur Pettigrat.  “No others.  Only I.”

“There!  That’s just like Sylvia,” cried Mrs. Thesiger, in exasperation.  “She has a fated look and makes nothing of it.”

But the secret of her discontent was just a woman’s jealousy of a younger rival.  Men were beginning to turn from her toward her daughter.  That Sylvia never competed only made the sting the sharper.  The grave face with its perfect oval, which smiled so rarely, but in so winning a way, its delicate color, its freshness, were points which she could not forgive her daughter.  She felt faded and yellow beside her, she rouged more heavily on account of her, she looked with more apprehension at the crow’s-feet which were beginning to show about the corners of her eyes, and the lines which were beginning to run from the nostrils to the corners of her mouth.

Sylvia reached the hotel in time for dinner, and as she sat with her mother, drinking her coffee in the garden afterward, Monsieur Pettigrat planted himself before the little iron table.

He shook his head, which was what his friends called “leonine.”

“Mademoiselle,” he said, in his most impressive voice, “I envy you.”

Sylvia looked up at him with a little smile of mischief upon her lips.

“And why, monsieur?”

He waved his arm magnificently.

“I watched you at dinner.  You are of the elect, mademoiselle, for whom the snow peaks have a message.”

Sylvia’s smile faded from her face.

“Perhaps so, monsieur,” she said, gravely, and her mother interposed testily: 

“A message!  Ridiculous!  There are only two words in the message, my dear.  Cold-cream! and be sure you put it on your face before you go to bed.”

Sylvia apparently did not hear her mother’s comment.  At all events she disregarded it, and Monsieur Pettigrat once again shook his head at Sylvia with a kindly magnificence.

“They have no message for me, mademoiselle,” he said, with a sigh, as though he for once regretted that he was so uncommon.  “I once went up there to see.”  He waved his hand generally to the chain of Mont Blanc and drifted largely away.