Lina and Gerald strolled up and down for a little while, almost in silence. She had said her say, and nothing had come of it. Her disappointment was bitter; for she had fancied that it needed but a few words from her to kindle the smouldering fires of ambition. She had supposed that every man was ambitious, however he might allow his aspirations to be choked by the thorns of this world: and here she had found in the lover of her choice a man without the faintest desire to achieve greatness, or to do good in his generation. Had he been such a man as Edgar Turchill, she would have felt no surprise at his indifference to the wider questions of life. Edgar was a man born to do his duty in a narrow groove; a large-hearted, simple-minded creature, but little removed from the peasant who tills the fields, and whose desires and hopes are shut in by the narrow circle of village life. But Gerald Goring—Gerald, whose ardent boyhood, whose passion for all the loftier delights of life, had lifted him so high above the common ruck of mankind—to find him at nine-and-twenty a languid pessimist, willing to live a life as selfish and as useless as his mother had led before him: this was indeed hard. And it was harder still for Madoline to discover how much she had overrated her influence upon him. A few years ago a word from her had been sufficient to urge him to any effort, to give bent and purpose to his mind; but a few years ago he had been still warm with the flush and fire of early youth. Daphne and Edgar joined them presently, both warm and breathless after a small experiment in the climbing way. ‘We have seen everything, and we have been up a mountain,’ exclaimed Daphne. ‘It is the funniest little village—a handful of wooden cottages perched on a narrow track straggling along anyhow on the very edge of the hill; a little new church that looks as if it had dropped from the clouds; a morsel of a post-office; a stack of wood beside every house; and a bundle of green vegetables hanging to dry in every porch and balcony. Poor people, do they live upon dried vegetables, I wonder? We found an English lady and her son sitting in the middle of the road—if you can call it a road—sketching a native boy. He was a very handsome boy, and sat as still as a statue. We stood ever so long and watched the two artists; and then we had a climb; and Edgar says I am a good climber. Do you think,’ coaxingly to Lina, ‘we might try the Silberhorn after luncheon?’