“You see,” he began at last, “we were together in Switzerland last summer,—met quite by accident at Chamonix,—and then at Geneva and Lucerne, and we walked up the Rigi together and got lost in a fog and stumbled around half the night. It was great fun and she was awfully plucky.” Here Paul stopped to recall the fun it was to be lost in a fog with a pretty girl, who clung so closely to him for protection that he sometimes had to hold her hand in his when she was very nervous and timid, and sometimes had his arm around her waist to keep her from falling when the way was rough and steep. Miss Hansford was still looking at him, and when she thought he had waited long enough she brought him back from his blissful reminiscence by asking, “Who walked up the Rigi with you, and got lost in the fog, and stumbled round half the night, and was awfully plucky? Your mother?” “Mother!” Paul repeated. “Mother walk up the Rigi! Great Scott! She was at the hotel, wild because we didn’t come. They had sent out two or three guides to look for us, and Mrs. Percy was in high hysterics when we finally reached the hotel. It was Clarice who was with me.” “Oh!” and Miss Hansford’s mouth was puckered into the perfect shape of the letter O, and kept its position as Paul went on: “Clarice took a severe cold and was ill for a week at the Schweitzerhoff, in Lucerne. We left them there, but they were with us again in Monte Carlo and Florence and Rome—and—” He hesitated, wishing Miss Hansford would say something to help him along. But she sat as rigid as a stone, while he floundered on until the climax was reached in Paris, where he asked Clarice to be his wife. “I always thought she was a nice girl when I used to see her here,” he said, “but I didn’t know half how bright and pretty she was till—er—” “Till you got lost with her in a fog on the Rigi,” Miss Hansford suggested grimly. It was something to have her speak at all, and Paul answered briskly, “I guess that’s about the truth. I couldn’t forget her after that, you know, and so we are engaged. I wanted to tell you and came this way from New York last night on purpose to see you. I hope you are glad.” Miss Hansford was not glad. She had never thought of Paul’s marrying for a long time,—certainly not that he would marry Clarice Percy, whom she disliked almost as much as she did her half brother, Jack. As Paul talked he had left the rocking chair and seated himself on the door step, with the netting thrown back, letting in a whole army of flies. But Miss Hansford did not notice them. She was trying to swallow the lumps in her throat and wondering what she could say. She could not tell him that she was sorry, and with a gasp and a mental prayer to be forgiven for the deception, she said, “Of course, I’m glad for anything which makes you happy. I never thought of you and Clarice. I s’posed she was after that snipper-snapper of an Englishman who was once here.”