‘A few florins more or less!’ he rejoined, rather frowning.  ’You have good Styrian boots, I see.  But I want to be over at the Baths there soon; not later than to-morrow.’

’But, brother, if they know we are coming they will wait for us.  And we can be there to-morrow night or the next morning!’

He considered it.  He wanted exercise and loved this mountain-land; his inclinations melted into hers; though he had reasons for hesitating.  ’Well, we’ll send on my portmanteau and your boxes in the cart; we’ll walk it.  You’re a capital walker, you’re a gallant comrade; I wouldn’t wish for a better.’  He wondered, as he spoke, whether any true-hearted gentleman besides himself would ever think the same of this lonely girl.

Her eyes looked a delighted ‘No-really?’ for the sweetest on earth to her was to be prized by her brother.

She hastened forward.  ‘We will go down and have our last meal at home,’ she said in the dialect of the country.  ’We have five eggs.  No meat for you, dear, but enough bread and butter, some honey left, and plenty of coffee.  I should like to have left old Mariandl more, but we are unable to do very much for poor people now.  Milk, I cannot say.  She is just the kind soul to be up and out to fetch us milk for an early first breakfast; but she may have overslept herself.’

Chillon smiled.  ‘You were right, Janet’, about not going to bed last night; we might have missed the morning.’

‘I hate sleep:  I hate anything that robs me of my will,’ she replied.

‘You’d be glad of your doses of sleep if you had to work and study.’

’To fall down by the wayside tired out—­yes, brother, a dead sleep is good.  Then you are in the hands of God.  Father used to say, four hours for a man, six for a woman.’

‘And four and twenty for a lord,’ added Chillon.  ‘I remember.’

‘A lord of that Admiralty,’ she appealed to his closer recollection.  ’But I mean, brother, dreaming is what I detest so.’

‘Don’t be detesting, my dear; reserve your strength,’ said he.  ’I suppose dreams are of some use, now and then.’

‘I shall never think them useful.’

‘When we can’t get what we want, my good Carin.’

‘Then we should not waste ourselves in dreams.’

’They promise falsely sometimes.  That’s no reason why we should reject the consolation when we can’t get what we want, my little sister.’

‘I would not be denied.’

‘There’s the impossible.’

‘Not for you, brother.’

Perhaps a half-minute after she had spoken, he said, ’pursuing a dialogue within himself aloud rather than revealing a secret:  ’You don’t know her position.’

Carinthia’s heart stopped beating.  Who was this person suddenly conjured up?

She fancied she might not have heard correctly; she feared to ask and yet she perceived a novel softness in him that would have answered.  Pain of an unknown kind made her love of her brother conscious that if she asked she would suffer greater pain.