‘Warm! It was stifling. This lake is at the bottom of a basin, completely shut in by hills,’ said Mrs. Ferrers, as if she had made a discovery. ‘I’ll tell you what we could do, Vernon. I might take the two girls up to the hotel at Glion, or at Les Avants. They are both very nice rustic hotels, clean and airy. A few days in that mountain air would pick Lina up wonderfully.’ ‘Would you like to go, dear?’ asked Sir Vernon doubtfully. ‘I should like it of all things, if you would go with us,’ answered his daughter; ‘but I don’t want to leave you.’ ‘Never mind me, Lina. I can get on pretty well for a few days, sorely as I shall miss you. I suppose three or four days will be enough?’ ‘Ample,’ said Mrs. Ferrers, delighted at having gained her point. ‘We can ramble about and see everything that is to be seen in three or four days.’ ‘So be it, then. Start as soon as you like. You had better send Jinman up at once to engage rooms for you. This is Monday. I suppose if you start to-morrow morning you can come back on Friday.’ ‘Certainly. Three days in that magnificent air will be quite long enough to make Lina strong,’ replied Mrs. Ferrers, assured that in three days she would have exhausted the pleasures of a lively hotel and picturesque surroundings. ‘I wish you were coming with us, dear father,’ said Madoline. ‘My dearest, do you think it would do me any good to have my old bones dragged up an almost perpendicular hill, and to put up with the indifferent accommodation of a rustic hotel? I am much better taking my ease here. The young men will want to go with you, no doubt.’ ‘If you please, sir,’ answered Edgar. Gerald Goring said never a word, but it was taken for granted that he meant to go. He and Madoline must, of course, be inseparable until that solemn knot should be tied which would make them one and indivisible for ever and ever. CHAPTER XXXI. ‘I WOLDE LIVE IN PEES, IF THAT I MIGHT.’ They had been three days at the homely, comfortable hotel at Les Avants, and Madoline was looking all the better for the fresh hillside air, an improvement upon which Mrs. Ferrers expatiated as the latest confirmation of the one all-abiding fact of her own ineffable wisdom. It was one of the loveliest days there had been in all that delicious month of summer weather—passing warm, yet with a gentle west wind that faintly stirred the heavy chestnut leaves, and breathed on Daphne’s cheek, or fluttered round her neck like a caress, scarcely moving the soft lace ruffle round her throat. It was a day on which a white gown seemed the only thing possible in costume, and Daphne and Lina were both dressed in white. It was not by any means the kind of day for climbing or excursionising of any kind, as even that ardent explorer Aunt Rhoda was fain to confess; rather a day on which to wander gently up and down easy paths, or to sit in the pine-woods reading Tennyson or Browning, or adding a few lazy stitches to the last sunflower in hand.