“If you come through this affair all right, what do you intend to turn to, Calvert?” said the other, who really felt a sort of interest in his fortunes. “I have thought of several things: the Church--the Colonies--Patent Fuel--Marriage--Turkish Baths, and a Sympathy Society for Suffering Nationalities, with a limited liability to all who subscribe fifty pounds and upwards.” “But, seriously, have you any plans?” “Ten thousand plans! I have plans enough to ruin all Threadneedle Street; but what use are plans? What’s the good of an architect in a land were there are no bricks, no mortar, and no timber? When I’ve shot Graham, I’ve a plan how to make my escape out of Switzerland; but, beyond that, nothing; not one step, I promise you. See, yonder is Monte Rosa; how grand he looks in the still calm air of the morning. What a gentleman a mountain is! how independent of the changeful fortunes of the plains, where grass succeeds tillage, and what is barley to-day, may be a brick-field to-morrow; but the mountain is ever the same--proud and cold if you will, but standing above all the accidents of condition, and asserting itself by qualities which are not money-getting. I’d like to live in a land of mountains, if it were not for the snobs that come to climb them.” “But why should they be snobs?” “I don’t know; perhaps the mountains like it. There, look yonder, our road leads along that ledge till we reach Chiasso, about twelve miles off; do you think you can last that long without breakfast? There, there, don’t make that pitiful face; you shall have your beefsteak, and your chocolate, and your eggs, and all the other claims of your Anglo-Saxon nature, whose birthright it is to growl for every twenty-four hours, and ‘grub’ every two.” They gained the little inn at Orta by the evening, and learned, as Calvert expected, that nothing had changed in his absence--indeed what was there to change--so long as the family at the villa remained in the cottage. All was to Calvert as he left it. Apologising to his friend for a brief absence, he took boat and crossed the lake. It was just as they had sat down to tea that he entered the drawing-room. If there was some constraint in the reception of him, there was that amount of surprise at his appearance that half masked it “You have been away, Mr. Calvert?” asked Miss Grainger. “Yes,” said he, carelessly, “I got a rambling fit on me, and finding that Loyd had started for England, I grew fidgety at being alone, so I went up to Milan, saw churches and galleries, and the last act of a ballet; but, like a country mouse, got home-sick for the hard peas and the hollow tree, and hurried back again.”