For the last two weeks Lynde had been impatiently looking forward to this journey.  The thought of having an entire day with Miss Denham, on such terms of intimacy as tacitly establish themselves between persons travelling together in the same carriage, had softened the prospect of the final parting at Chamouni; though now he did not intend they should separate there, unless she cruelly willed it.  The nature of Miss Denham’s regard for him Lynde had not fathomed.  She had been frank and friendly with him, as she might have been with a cousin or a person much older than herself.  As he told Flemming, he had never had her a minute alone.  The aunt had always accompanied them on their brief walks and excursions about Geneva; whenever she had been unable to do so, the excursion or the walk had been abandoned.  Lynde saw, among other gracious things in this day’s ride, a promising opportunity for a tete-a-tete with Miss Denham.  Here and there, along the winding ascents, would be tempting foot-paths, short pine—­shaded cuts across the rocks, by which the carriage could be intercepted farther on.  These five or ten minutes’ walks, always made enchanting by some unlooked-for grove, or grotto, or cascade, were nearly certain to lure Miss Ruth to her feet.  Then he would have her to himself, for Mrs. Denham seldom walked when she could avoid it.  To make assurance doubly sure Lynde could almost have wished her one of those distracting headaches from which hitherto he had suffered so keenly.

For the first few miles the road lay through a succession of villas and cultivated gardens; indeed, these gardens and villas extend all the way to Chene, where a thin ribbon of a stream, the Foron, draws the boundary line between the canton of Geneva and Savoy.  At this point the scenery begins, not too aggressively, to be picturesque; you catch some neat views of the Voirons, and of the range of the Jura lying on your right.  Beyond is the village of Annemasse, and the Chateau of Etrambiere, with its quartette of towers, rises from the foot of the Petit-Saleve in the bluish-gray distance.  You no longer see Mont Blanc, except at intervals.  Here and there a knot of hamlets clings to some fir-dotted slope, or tries to hide itself away in the bosom of a ravine.  All these Alpine villages bear the same resemblance to one another as so many button-moulds of different sizes.  Each has its quaint little church of stucco, surrounded by clusters of gray and dingy-white head-stones and crosses—­ like a shepherd standing in the midst of his flock; each has its bedrabbled main street, with a great stone trough into which a stream of ice-cold water is forever flowing, and where comely young women of substantial ankles, with their flaxen hair braided down their backs, are forever washing linen; each has its beggar, with a goitre or a wooden leg, lying in wait for you; and each, in turn, with its purple and green and red tiled roofs, is charming to approach and delightful to get away from.