Even the delight of leaning upon a stone parapet to feed bears in a not too odoriferous den must come to an end at last, and Daphne, having had enough of the national beasts, consented to get into a roomy open carriage which Gerald had found while she was dispensing her favours, to the admiration of half-a-dozen country people, who were leaning lazily against the parapet, and wondering at the beauty of the two English girls in their cool delicate-hued raiment. There was plenty to admire in the neighbourhood of Berne, albeit the Alps were in hiding, and after a light luncheon at a confectioner’s in one of the arcades, they drove about till it was time to dress for dinner. They started early on the next afternoon for Thun, and between Berne and Thun the Jungfrau first revealed herself in all her virginal beauty—whiter, purer than all the rest of the mountain world—to Daphne’s delighted eyes. Never could she take her fill of gazing on that divine pinnacle, that heaven-aspiring mount, rising above a cluster of satellite hills, like Jupiter surrounded by his moons. ‘If you told me that on that very mountain-top Moses saw God, I should believe you,’ cried Daphne, deeply moved. ‘I am sorry to say the pinnacle on which Jehovah revealed Himself to His chosen mouthpiece is a shabby affair in comparison with yonder peak, a mere hillock of seven thousand feet or so,’ said Gerald, looking up from the day before yesterday’s _Times_. ‘You have seen it?’ ‘I have stood on Serbâl, and Gebel Mousa, and Bas Sasâfeh, the three separate mountain-tops which contend for the honour of having been trodden by the feet of the Creator.’ ‘How delightful to have seen so much of this world!’ ‘And to have so little left in this world to see,’ answered Gerald; ‘there is always the reverse of the shield.’ ‘It will make it all the pleasanter for you to settle down at Goring Abbey,’ said Daphne, assuming her most practical tone. ‘You will not be tormented by the idea of all the lovely spots of earth, the wonderful rivers and forests and mountains which you have not seen, as Edgar and I must be at dear old Hawksyard. But we mean to travel immensely, do we not, Edgar?’ Another distinct allusion to her coming life, the near approaching time when she and Edgar would be one. The Squire of Hawksyard smiled delightedly at this recognition of the bond. ‘I am sure to do whatever you wish, and go wherever you like,’ he answered; ‘but I am tremendously fond of home, one’s own fireside, don’t you know, and one’s own stable.’