Had the magnetism of her coquetry fired him?  I wondered, it would be strange if it were not so, for she was beautiful, and her manner flattering to a boy so young.  Somehow, my spirits were dashed at the thought that my companion’s last words to me might be explained by jealousy of an older man with a pretty woman.  It would be hard if it were to come to this between us.  Though I had talked of going to see her in Monte Carlo, the butterfly Contessa was no more to me than a delicate pastel on someone else’s wall, or a gay refrain, which charms the ear without haunting the memory.  I would not interfere with the Boy; if he chose to encourage Gaeta to flirt with him, he need not fear me; but I had liked to think he valued my comradeship.  Now, a fancy for this child-woman would rob me of him.  Instead of being piqued by the Contessa’s growing preference for the Boy, as I ought to have been by all the rules of the game of flirtation, I was conscious of anger against her as an intruder.

This feeling increased almost to sulkiness when the Boy was invited to take a seat in the carriage beside the gloomy Baron, and accepted promptly.

The driving party had been delayed a long time in starting, Gaeta explained, making large eyes which blamed her friends for everything; and the driver had brought his horses slowly, oh, so slowly, up the long hill, the stupid fellow.  But now the carriage flashed ahead, and I was left to tramp on alone, while the Contessa and the Boy flirted, and Joseph and Innocentina bickered, all alike unmindful of me.

We lunched at the Col de Forclaz, where the hill, tired of going up, ran down to another valley.  There was a godlike assemblage of mountains, white and blue, mountains as far as the eye could reach, and I had a thought or two which I would have liked to exchange for some of the Boy’s.  But if he had ever really had any thoughts, save for the fun of the moment, he had the air of forgetting them all for Gaeta.  When, in a tone of unenthusiastic politeness, she asked if I would not take my friend’s place in the carriage for a while when we started on again, out of pure spite against the little wretch who had dropped me for her I said that I would.

I could not see the Boy’s face, to make sure if he were disappointed, but I hoped it.  As for myself, I would fain have walked.  In a scene of such exalted beauty, Gaeta’s little quips and quirks struck a wrong note.  Sitting with my back to the horses, I could see the Boy walking on behind, his face raised mountain-ward and sky-ward, and I longed to know of what he was thinking, for evidently he had left his aggravating, “awfully-jolly-don’t-you-know” mood in the carriage with the Contessa.

[Illustration:  “SITTING WITH MY BACK TO THE HORSES.”]