“Take it, my boy; my name’s on the handle!”

On finishing their coffee the young men lighted cigars and sallied forth for a stroll along the bank of the river, which they followed to the confluence of the Rhone with the Arve, stopping on the way to leave an order at a florist’s.  Returning to the hotel some time after mid-day, they found the flowers awaiting them in Lynde’s parlor, where a servant was already laying the cloth.  There were bouquets for the ladies’ plates, an imposing centre-piece in the shape of a pyramid, and a profusion of loose flowers.

“What shall we do with these?” asked Lynde, pointing to the latter.

“Set ’em around somewhere,” said Flemming, with cheerful vagueness.

Lynde disposed the flowers around the room to the best of his judgment; he hung some among the glass pendants of the chandelier, gave a nosegay to each of the two gilt statuettes in the corners, and piled the remainder about the base of a monumental clock on the mantelpiece.

“That’s rather a pretty idea, isn’t it?—­wreathing Time in flowers,” remarked Flemming, with honest envy of his friend’s profounder depth of poetic sentiment.

“I thought it rather neat,” said Lynde, who had not thought of it at all.

In the course of that dinner if two or three unexplained demure smiles flitted over Miss Denham’s face, they might, perhaps, have been indirectly traced to these floral decorations, though they pleased her more than if a woman’s hand had been visible in them.

“Flemming,” said Lynde, with a severe aesthetic air, “I don’t think that arrangement in the fireplace is quite up to the rest of the room.”

“Nor I either,” said Flemming, who had been silently admiring it for the last ten minutes.

The fireplace in question was stuffed with a quantity of long, delicately spiral shavings, sprinkled with silver spangles or flakes of isinglass, and covered by a piece of pale blue illusion.  This device—­ peculiarly Genevese—­was supposed to represent a waterfall.

“Take a match and touch it off,” suggested Flemming.

“If we had some more flowers, now”—­“Exactly.  I am going to the hotel to get myself up like a head-waiter, and I’ll bring some when I come back.”

In an hour afterwards Flemming reappeared, followed by a youth bearing an immense basket.  Lynde removed the Alpine waterfall to an adjoining chamber, and built up a huge fire of flame-colored flowers in the grate.  The two friends were standing in the middle of the room, gravely contemplating the effect, when a servant opened the door and announced Mrs. and Miss Denham.  A rustle of drapery at the threshold was followed by the entrance of the two ladies in ceremonious dinner toilets.