‘There is Jinman, my dear; he can do all I want. Of course it is much pleasanter for me to be waited on by you; but Jinman is very handy, and will serve on a pinch.’ ‘But all those letters, dear father,’ urged Lina, looking at an alarming bundle of businesslike documents. ‘Could I not help you with those? Could not the greater part of them stand over till we are at Montreux?’ ‘Some of them might, perhaps; but some must be answered to-day. Don’t worry yourself about me, Lina; I know you have set your heart upon going up to Müren with Daphne.’ ‘I should like to show her the scenery which delighted me so years ago,’ answered Lina; ‘but I can’t bear the idea of leaving you for so long.’ ‘My dear child, you are talking nonsense,’ said Sir Vernon testily. ‘In October you are going to leave me altogether.’ ‘Yes; but I shall not be leaving you in a strange hotel; and I shall be so near, at your beck and call, always.’ Sir Vernon, having made up his mind to the sacrifice, carried it out with consistent fortitude. He himself ordered the carriage which was to carry off his beloved daughter, with those other three who were comparatively indifferent to him. They drove away from the hotel immediately after a seven o’clock breakfast, in the clear light of morning, while the fields and hedges were still dewy, and the earth wore her fairest freshest colours and breathed out her sweetest odours. Soon after they left the village they came to the road beside the deep and rapid Lutschine, which cleaves the heart of the valley. On either side rose a lofty wall of hills, slope above slope, climbing up to heaven, clothed to the very summit with tall feathery firs, some of stupendous size, the sombre tints of these patriarchs relieved by the tender green of the young larches; the White Lutschine rushing on all the while, a wild romantic stream, tumbling and seething over masses of stone. Here by the river bank they stopped to see the murder-stone, an inscription cut on the face of the rock, which tells how at this spot a brother slew his brother. It is a lovely drive, so lovely that it is hardly possible for the mind to be distracted from its fairness by any other thought. Daphne sat silent in her corner of the carriage, drinking in the beauty of the scene, her gaze wandering upward and upward to those mighty hills, those forests upon the edge of heaven, so remote, so inaccessible in their loveliness, the greenery pierced every here and there by narrow streamlets that came trickling down like wandering flashes of silvery light. Solitude and silence were the prevailing expression of that exquisite scene. The cattle had all been removed to the upper regions, to remote pastures on the borderland of the everlasting snow-fields; of human life there were few signs; only a distant _châlet_ showing here and there, perched on some ledge of the green hills. The voice of the river was the one sound that broke the summer stillness.