Venetian blinds; the chattering of the love-birds; the strains of a waltz of Waldteufel’s floating up from a German band in the street below—­they ran into a single sensation that was like the stab of cold steel.  He sat staring blankly at the tattered bookshelves, playing mechanically with his teaspoon; and presently he became aware that the young girl was talking, was telling him the route they should take next week, and the name of the hotel they were going to at Basel.

“Yes,” he hazarded, and “Yes,” and “Yes,” his smiling lips belying the lassitude of his eyes.  Actually, he looked out and beyond her, at another Eve, to whom he now paid his adieux.  It was the dainty little figure of her childish self which he saw, with its bright, long hair, and its confiding eyes, and its caressing little ways, in the deepening shadows between the bookshelves—­and for the last time.  It vanished like a shadow, smiling mockingly, and he knew it would never return.  In its place abode henceforth the image of this stately maiden, comely and desirable, with the profound eyes which lighted up—­for Dick.  An unaccountable sense of failure stole over Rainham—­unaccountable because he could lay his finger upon no tangible cause of his discomfiture.

CHAPTER XI

The little town was brilliant with September sunshine; the blue smoke spired almost unbroken into the bluer vault above, and the cream-coloured facades of the houses, with their faded blue shutters and verandas, the gay striped awnings of the little fleet of rowing boats, the gray of the stone parapet, and the dull green of the mountainous opposite shore, were mirrored steeply in the bight of narrowing, sunlit lake.  The wide, dusty esplanade was almost empty, except at the corners, where voluble market women gossiped over their fruit-baskets, heaped with purple-brown figs, little mountain-born strawberries, sweet, watery grapes, green almonds, and stupendous pears.  At rare intervals a steamboat, bright and neat as a new toy, trailed a long feather of smoke from the foot of the Rigi, shed a small and dusty crowd into the sleepy town, and then bustled back, shearing the silken flood and strangely distorting its reflections.

“The worst of Lucerne,” said Mrs. Sylvester—­“the worst of Lucerne is that one can’t escape from Mount Pilatus and the Lion.  The inhabitants all think that Pilatus regulates the weather, and they would certainly give their Lion the preference over the Venus of Milo.”

They were all sitting on the terrace in front of the Schweitzerhof; Lady Garnett and Mary, Mrs. Sylvester and Eve.  Lady Garnett and her companion were but newly arrived, and, as birds of passage, preferred the hotel to a pension.  The Sylvesters had been staying in the quaint, rambling town for nearly a fortnight.  It was their usual summer resort, and although the spring of each year found them deciding to go elsewhere for a change, in the