And then, seeing that Daphne hungered for any information about yonder mountain, he condescended to tell her how he and a couple of friends, allied by the climbing propensity rather than by ancient friendship, had ascended the north face of the Silberhorn, with the idea of finding a direct route over its summit to the top of the Jungfrau; how after ten hours of very hard work they had planted their feet on the top of the dazzling peak, only to find the snow falling thickly round them, and the Jungfrau and the Giessen glacier already hidden behind a fleecy cloud; how, after waiting in vain for the storm to pass, they had made a perilous descent to the upper plateau of the Giessen glacier; and how there, amidst thick clouds and driving snow, they groped their way round the edges of huge crevasses before they hit on a practical path descending the ice-fall; and how, finding the night closing in upon them, they were fain to sit upon a ledge of rock under a sheltering cliff till daybreak. ‘Poor things!’ exclaimed Daphne with infinite compassion; ‘and you never reached the top of the Jungfrau after all.’ ‘Not by that way. I have scaled her granite point from the Roththal Sattel.’ ‘And is it very lovely up there?’ ‘_C’est selon._ When I mounted, the Maiden was wrapped in cloud, and there was no distant view, nor could we spare more than a quarter of an hour for rest on the summit; but we saw an avalanche or two on our way, and altogether we had a very good time.’ CHAPTER XXIX. ‘I MEANE WELL, BY GOD THAT SIT ABOVE.’ It was pleasant to drink tea at a little table in the garden of the inn, with the white mountain world spread before them in all its glory, flushed with the golden lights of afternoon. Edgar looked ineffably happy as he sat sipping his tea and watching Daphne eat bread and honey, which seemed her chief nutriment in this part of the world; for Swiss poultry and Swiss veal, for all the varieties of _vol-au-vent_, _fricandeau_, _ris de veau_, and _fricassée_, under which the inevitable calf disguised himself, she showed herself absolutely indifferent; but she had an infinite capacity for Swiss rolls and Swiss honey. While they were sitting at tea, resting before they began the downward walk, Mr. Turchill produced a letter which that morning’s post had brought him from his mother: one of those worthy commonplace letters which set one’s teeth on edge when read aloud amidst the loftiest aspects of nature. But Edgar saw nothing beyond the love and the kindness in his mother’s epistle, and would have read it on the summit of Caucasus, yea, on that topmost untrodden snow-peak which the Persians call the Holy Mountain, and would have perceived no discord between the letter and the scene. ‘The dear mother’s letter is full of you, Daphne,’ he said; ‘would it bore you and Mr. Goring if I were to read a little of it, Lina?’