Fewer tourists and more hunters had been coming to the Lodge of late; the crack of the rifle sounded all day. There was great talk of a hunt which the duke would hold in September, and the colonel and Rex were invited. But though September was now only a few days off, the colonel was growing too restless to wait.

After Yvonne’s visit, he and Ruth were much together. It seemed to happen so. They took long walks into the woods, but Ruth seemed to share now her father’s aversion to climbing, and Gethryn stalked the deer with only the Jaegers for company.

Ruth and her father used to come home with their arms full of wild flowers — the fair, lovely wild blossoms of Bavaria which sprang up everywhere in their path. The colonel was great company on these expeditions, singing airs from obsolete operas of his youth, and telling stories of La Grange, Brignoli and Amodio, of the Strakosches and Maretzeks, with much liveliness. Sometimes there would be a silence, however, and then if Ruth looked up she often met his eyes. Then he would smile and say:

“Well, Daisy!” and she would smile and say:

“Well, dear!”

But this could not last. About a week after Yvonne’s visit, the colonel, after one of these walks, instead of joining Rex for a smoke, left him sitting with Ruth under the beech tree and mounted the stairs to Mrs Dene’s room.

It was an hour later when he rose and kissed his wife, who had been sitting at her window all the time of their quiet talk, with eyes fixed on the young people below.

“I never dreamed of it!” said he.

“I did, I wished it,” was her answer. “I thought he was — but they are all alike!” she ended sadly and bitterly. “To think of a boy as wellborn as Rex — “ But the colonel, who possibly knew more about wellborn boys than his wife did, interrupted her:

“Hang the boys! It’s Ruth I’m grieved for!”

“My daughter needs no one’s solicitude, not even ours!” said the old lady haughtily.

“Right! Thank God!” said the veteran, in a tone of relief. “Good night, my dear!”

Two days later they left for Paris.

Rex accompanied them as far as Schicksalsee, promising to follow them in a few days.

The handsome, soldierly-looking Herr F?rster stood by their carriage and gave them a “Glück-liche Reise!” and a warm “Auf Wiedersehen!” as they drove away. Returning up the steps slowly and seriously, he caught the eye of Sepp and Federl, who had been looking after the carriage as it turned out of sight beyond the bridge:

“Schade!” said the Herr F?rster, and went into the house.

“Schade!” said Federl.

“Jammer-schade!” growled Sepp.

On the platform at Schicksalsee, Rex and Ruth were walking while they waited for the train. “Ruth,” said Rex, “I hope you never will need a friend’s life to save yours from harm; but if you do, take mine.”

“Yes, Rex.” She raised her eyes and looked into the distance. Far on the horizon loomed the Red Peak.

The clumsy mail drew up beside the platform. It was the year when all the world was running after a very commonplace Operetta with one lovely stolen song: a Volks-song. One heard it everywhere, on both continents; and now as the postillion, in his shiny hat with the cockade, his light blue jacket and white small clothes, and his curly brass horn, came rattling down the street, he was playing the same melody:

Es ist im Leben h??lich eingerichtet —

The train drew into the station. When it panted forth again, Gethryn stood waving his hand, and watched it out of sight.

Turning at last to leave the platform, he found that the crowd had melted away; only a residue of crimson-capped officials remained. He inquired of one where he could find an expressman and was referred to a mild man absorbing a bad cigar. With him Gethryn arranged for having his traps brought from Trauerbach and consigned to the brothers Schnurr at the “Gasthof zur Post,” Schicksalsee, that inn being close to the station.

This settled, he lighted a cigarette and strolled across to his hotel, sitting down on a stone bench before the door, and looking off at the lake.

It was mid-afternoon. The little place was asleep. Nothing was stirring about the inn excepting a bandy Dachshund, which came wheezing up and thrust a cold nose into the young man’s hand. High in the air a hawk was wheeling; his faint, querulous cry struck Gethryn with an unwonted sense of loneliness. He noticed how yellow some of the trees were on the slopes across the lake. Autumn had come before summer was ended. He leaned over and patted the hound. A door opened, a voice cried, “Ei Dachl! du! Dachl!” and the dog made off at the top of his hobbyhorse gait.

The silence was unbroken except for the harsh cries of the hawk, sailing low now in great circles over the lake. The sun flashed on his broad, burnished wings as he stooped; Gethryn fancied he could see his evil little eyes; finally the bird rose and dwindled away, lost against the mountainside.

He was roused from his reverie by angry voices.

“Cochon! Kerl! Menteur!” cried someone.

The other voice remonstrated with a snarl.

“Bah!” cried the first, “you lie!”

“Alsatians,” thought Rex; “what horrible French!”

The snarling began again, but gradually lapsed into whining. Rex looked about him.

The quarreling seemed to come from a small room which opened out of the hotel restaurant. Windows gave from it over the front, but the blinds were down.

“No! No! I tell you! Not one sou! Starve? I hope you will!” cried the first voice, and a stamp set some bottles and glasses jingling.

“Alsatians and Jews!” thought Rex. One voice was unpleasantly familiar to him, and he wondered if Mr Blumenthal spoke French as he did English. Deciding with a careless smile that of course he did, Rex ceased to think of him, not feeling any curiosity to go and see with whom his late fellow-lodger might be quarreling. He sat and watched instead, as he lounged in the sunshine, some smart carriages whirling past, their horses stepping high, the lackeys muffled from the mountain air in winter furs, crests on the panels.

An adjutant in green, with a great flutter of white cock’s feathers from his chapeau, sitting up on the box of an equipage, accompanied by flunkies in the royal blue and white of Bavaria, was a more agreeable object to contemplate than Mr Blumenthal, and Gethryn felt as much personal connection with the Prince Regent hurrying home to Munich, from his little hunting visit to the emperor of Austria, as with the wrangling Jews behind the close-drawn blinds of the coffee-room at his back.

The sun was slowly declining. Rex rose and idled into the smoking-room. It was deserted but for the clerk at his desk, a railed enclosure, one side of which opened into the smoking-room, the other side into the hall. Across the hall was a door with “Café — Restaurant,” in gilt letters above it. Rex did not enter the café; he sat and dreamed in the empty smoking-room over his cigarette.

But it was lively in the café, in spite of the waning season. A good many of the tables were occupied. At one of them sat the three unchaperoned Miss Dashleighs, in company with three solemn, high-shouldered young officers, enjoying something in tall, slender tumblers which looked hot and smelled spicy. At another table Mr Everett Tweeler and Mrs Tweeler were alternately scolding and stuffing Master Irving Tweeler, who expressed in impassioned tones a desire for tarts.

“Ur — r — ving!” remonstrated Mr Tweeler.

“Dahling!” argued Mrs Tweeler. “If oo eats too many ‘ittle cakies then oo tant go home to Salem on the puffy, puffy choo-choo boat.”

Old Sir Griffin Damby overheard and snorted.

When Master Tweeler secured his tarts, Sir Griffin blessed the meal with a hearty “damn!”

He did not care for Master Tweeler’s nightly stomach aches, but their rooms adjoined. When “Ur — r — ving” reached unmolested for his fourth, Sir Griffin rose violently, and muttering, “Change me room, begad!” waddled down to the door, glaring aggressively at the occupants of the various tables. Near the exit a half suppressed squeal caused him to swing round. He had stepped squarely on the toe of a meager individual, who now sat nursing his foot in bitter dejection.

“Pardon — “ began Sir Griffin, then stopped and glared at the sallow-faced person.

Sir Griffin stared hard at the man he had stepped on, and at his female companion.

“Damn it!” he cried. “Keep your feet out of the way, do you hear?” puffed his cheeks, squared his shoulders and snorted himself out of the café.

The yellow-faced man was livid with rage.

“Don’t be a fool, Mannie,” whispered the woman; “don’t make a row — do you know who that is?”

“He’s an English hog,” spluttered the man with an oath; “he’s a cursed hog of an Englishman!”

“Yes, and he knows us. He was at Monaco a few summers ago. Don’t forget who turned us out of the Casino.”

Emanuel Pick turned a shade more sallow and sank back in his seat.

Neither spoke again for some moments. Presently the woman began to stir the bits of lemon and ice in her empty tumbler. Pick watched her sulkily.

“You always take the most expensive drinks. Why can’t you order coffee, as others do?” he snarled.

She glanced at him. “Jew,” she sneered.

“All right; only wait! I’ve come to the end of my rope. I’ve got just money enough left to get back to Paris — ”

“You lie, Mannie!”

He paid no attention to this compliment, but lighted a cigar and dropped the match on the floor, grinding it under his heel.

“You have ten thousand francs today! You lie if you say you have not.”

Mr Pick softly dropped his eyelids.

“That is for me, in case of need. I will need it too, very soon!”

His companion glared at him and bit her lip.

“If you and I are to remain dear friends,” continued Mr Pick, “we must manage to raise money, somehow. You know that as well as I do.”

Still she said nothing, but kept her eyes on his face. He glanced up and looked away uneasily.

“I have seen my uncle again. He knows all about your sister and the American. He says it is only because of him that she refuses the handsome offer.”

The woman’s face grew tigerish, and she nodded rapidly, muttering, “Ah! yes! Mais oui! the American. I do not forget him!”

“My dear uncle thinks it is our fault that your sister refuses to forget him, which is more to the purpose,” sneered Pick. “He says you did not press that offer he made Yvonne with any skill, else she would never have refused it again — that makes four times,” he added. “Four times she has refused an establishment and — ”

“Pst! what are you raising your voice for?” hissed the woman. “And how is it my fault?” she went on.

“I don’t say it is. I know better — who could wish more than we that your sister should become the mistress of my dear rich uncle? But when I tried to tell him just now that we had done our best, he raved at me. He has guessed somehow that they mean to marry. I did not tell him that we too had guessed it. But he said I knew it and was concealing it from him. I asked him for a little money to go on with. Curse him, he would not lend me a sou! Said he never would again — curse him!”

There was a silence while Pick smoked on. The woman did not smoke too because she had no cigarette, and Pick did not offer her any. Presently he spoke again.

“Yes, you certainly are an expensive luxury, under the circumstances. And since you have so mismanaged your fool of a sister’s affair, I don’t see how the circumstances can improve.”

She watched him. “And the ten thousand francs? You will throw me off and enjoy them at your ease?”

He cringed at her tone. “Not enjoy — without you — ”

“No,” she said coolly, “for I shall kill you.”

Mr Pick smiled uncomfortably. “That would please the American,” he said, trying to jest, but his hand trembled as he touched the stem of his cigar-holder to shake off the ashes.

A sudden thought leaped into her face. “Why not please — me — instead?” she whispered.

Their eyes met. Her face was hard and bold — ............