Carinthia had given Woodseer her hand and reddened under the recollection of Chillon’s words to her as they mounted the rise of the narrow vale, after leaving the lame gentleman to his tobacco on the grass below the rocks.  Her brother might have counselled her wisely and was to be obeyed.  Only, the great pleasure in seeing the gentleman again inspired gratitude:  he brought the scene to her; and it was alive, it chatted and it beckoned; it neighboured her home; she had passed it on her walk away from her home; the gentleman was her link to the mountain paths; he was just outside an association with her father and mother.  At least, her thinking of them led to him, he to them.  Now that she had lost Chillon, no one was near to do so much.  Besides, Chillon loved Henrietta; he was her own.  His heart was hers and his mind his country’s.  This gentleman loved the mountains; the sight of him breathed mountain air.  To see him next day was her anticipation:  for it would be at the skirts of hilly forest land, where pinetrees are a noble family, different from the dusty firs of the weariful plains, which had tired her eyes of late.

Baden was her first peep at the edges of the world since she had grown to be a young woman.  She had but a faint idea of the significance of gambling.  The brilliant lights, the band music, the sitting groups and company of promenaders were novelties; the Ball of the ensuing night at the Schloss would be a wonder, she acknowledged in response to Henrietta, who was trying to understand her; and she admired her ball-dress, she said, looking unintelligently when she heard that she would be guilty of slaying numbers of gentlemen before the night was over.  Madame Clemence thought her chances in that respect as good as any other young lady’s, if only she could be got to feel interested.  But at a word of the pine forest, and saying she intended to climb the hills early with the light in the morning, a pointed eagerness flushed Carinthia, the cold engraving became a picture of colour.

She was out with the earliest light.  Yesterday’s parting between Chillon and Henrietta had taught her to know some little about love; and if her voice had been heeded by Chillon’s beloved, it would not have been a parting.  Her only success was to bring a flood of tears from Henrietta.  The tears at least assured her that her brother’s beautiful girl had no love for the other one,—­the young nobleman of the great wealth, who was to be at the Ball, and had ‘gone flying,’ Admiral Fakenham shrugged to say; for Lord Fleetwood was nowhere seen.