The mountains and the lake were beginning to lose something of their enchantment, something of their power to lift her out of herself and to make her forget human sorrow amidst the immensities of Nature. She did not love them less as they grew familiar, nay, her love increased with her knowledge; but the distraction diminished. She could think of herself and her own sorrow now, under the walls of Chillon, just as keenly as in the elm walk in Stratford churchyard. The wide lake glittering in the morning sun was no longer a magical picture, before which every thought of self faded. Gliding dreamily along the blue water she gave herself up to a sadness that was half bitter, half sweet; bitter, because she knew that her life was to be spent apart from Gerald Goring; sweet, because she was so certain of his love. He told her of it every day, however carefully she avoided all direct association with him: told her by veiled words, by stolen looks, by that despondency and gloom which hung about him like a cloud. Love has a hundred subtle ways of revealing itself. A fatal passion needs not to be expounded in the preachments of a St. Preux, in the moral lectures and intellectual flights of a Julie. Briefer and more direct is the language of an unhappy love. It reveals itself unawares; it escapes from the soul unconsciously, as the perfume from the rose. Daphne was very thankful when her aunt’s active and insatiable spirit was fain to subside into repose; not because Mrs. Ferrers was tired of sight-seeing, but simply because she had conscientiously done every lion within a manageable distance of Montreux. In her secret soul Aunt Rhoda thought contemptuously of the bluest, biggest, lake in Switzerland, and all the glory of the Savoy range. Had not these easily-reached districts long ceased to be fashionable? Her soul yearned for Ragatz or Davos, St. Moritz or Pontresina, the only places of which people with any pretence to good style ever talked nowadays. It was all very well for Byron to be eloquent about Lake Leman or ecstatic about Mont Blanc; for in his time railways and monster steamboats had not vulgarised Savoy, and a gentleman might be rapturous about scenes which were only known to the travelled Englishman. But to-day, when every Cook’s tourist had scaled the Montanvert, when ‘Arry was a familiar figure on the skirts of the Great Glacier, who could feel any pride or real satisfaction in a prolonged residence on the Lake of Geneva. With all those subtle wiles of which a worldly woman is mistress did Mrs. Ferrers try to direct her brother’s thoughts and fancies towards the Engadine. She reminded him how the fashionable London physician had lauded the life-giving, youth-renewing quality of the atmosphere, and had particularly recommended Pontresina, if he could but manage the journey. ‘But I can’t manage it, and I don’t mean to manage it,’ retorted Sir Vernon testily. ‘Do you suppose I am going to endure a jolting drive of twenty-four hours——’