“You may see him.  But you must remember that he isn’t strong and needs quietness.”

“I’ll be very careful,” Walters said with a grateful look.  “May I take it that your consent is a sign that you’ll try to forgive me for my share in the accident?”

Lucy forced a smile.  “We’ll see how you keep your promise.”

She sat down, feeling rather limp, when he left her.  He had, on the surface, taken a very proper line, and his excuse for coming was plausible, but she knew that it was false.  The man had meant to leave her lover to freeze among the rocks and was horribly clever.  It was hard to preserve her calm when she hated and feared him, and although she thought she had not acted badly, the interview had been trying.  Besides, Lawrence was generous and not very discriminating.  Walters might find a way of disarming the suspicions Foster had roused.

When the page showed Walters to his room, he said to the lad, “I want somebody to go to the station for my bag.  Have they a telegraph office?”

“Yep; I’m going down to send a wire.  Office isn’t open long.  Agent quits as soon as the east-bound freight comes through.”

“I suppose the wire’s from Miss Stephen?”

The page nodded and Walters gave him twenty-five cents.  “Well, if you can wait a little, I’ll have a message to send; it will save you a journey.”

The boy hesitated; but the money banished his doubts.  “All right; you’d better get it written.  The freight’s nearly due.”

Walters went to Lawrence’s room before he wrote the telegram, and met Lucy again at dinner.  There were only two tables in use in the large dining-room, and the waiter sent him to Mrs. Stephen’s.  Lucy wondered whether Walters had arranged this with the man beforehand, but it gave her an opportunity of watching him and she did not object.  She admitted that he had nerve and tact, for although she feared him and her mother shared her distrust, he was able to banish the constraint both felt and amuse the party.  Lucy could not tell what Lawrence thought, but he laughed at the other’s stories and now and then bantered him.

After dinner Walters left them and when they went; to Mrs. Stephen’s sitting-room Lucy remarked rather sharply:  “You seemed to find Walters amusing!”

“He is amusing,” Lawrence answered.  “In fact, the fellow puzzles me.”

“You mean he couldn’t talk in that good-humored, witty way if he had plotted to leave you on the couloir?”

“Well,” said Lawrence, “I suppose I did feel something of the kind.”

“I don’t know that it’s very logical,” Lucy rejoined, hiding her alarm.  “You agreed with Foster’s conclusions when he was here.”

“I did, to some extent.  The way Jake argued out the matter made things look pretty bad.”

“But they look better now?  Walters was talking to you in your room?”

“He didn’t say much about our climb; just a word or two of regret for his carelessness in not seeing what had happened to the guide.”