Gerald Goring handed the two ladies to their seats in the landau, and took his place facing them. He had a listless worn-out look, as if his pedestrianism last night had exhausted him. ‘You are not looking well, Gerald,’ Lina said anxiously, disturbed at seeing his haggard countenance in the clear morning light. ‘My dearest, who could possibly look well in such a languid atmosphere as this? We are in a vaporous basin, shut in by a circle of hills. Down at Montreux it is like being at the bottom of a gigantic forcing-pit; here, though we fancy ourselves ever so high, we are only on the side of the incline. The wall still rises above us. At this season we ought to be at Davos or Pontresina.’ ‘Those are the only places people go to nowadays,’ said Mrs. Ferrers discontentedly. ‘I shall be almost ashamed to tell my friends where I have been. All the people one meets in society go to the Engadine.’ ‘I don’t think that idea need spoil our enjoyment of this lovely scenery,’ said Madoline. ‘Look at Daphne and Mr. Turchill, what a way they are below us!’ She pointed with her sunshade to a glancing white figure among the chestnut groves below. Edgar and Daphne had descended by those steep straight paths which made so little of the distance, while the horses were travelling quietly along the gentle windings of the road. It was a lovely drive to Montreux, the town and its adjacent villages looking like a child’s toys set out upon a green table; the castle of Chillon distinctly seen at every turn of the road; the hillsides shaded by Spanish chestnuts, big and old; verdant slopes mounting up and up towards a blue heaven. They passed the little post and telegraph office at Glion, a wooden hut, baked through and through with the sun, like an oven; the hotel where the children were at play in the garden, and a few early-rising adults strolled about rather listlessly, waiting for breakfast; and then down by the ever-winding road, past many a trickling waterfall; sometimes a mere cleft in the rock, sometimes a stony recess in a low wall, fringed with ferns, where the water drops perpetually into the basin below, and so by wooded slopes descending steeply to the sapphire lake, past the parish church, picturesquely situated on the hillside, and by many a public pump with a double spout, and tanks where the women were washing linen or vegetables under an open roof. Some kind of industry was going on at all these public fountains; or at least there was a group of children dabbling in the water. They were at Montreux before ten o’clock; Sir Vernon delighted to have his elder daughter back again, and even inquiring civilly about Daphne, who had not yet arrived, despite the tremendous spurt she and Edgar had begun with.