He stayed a few minutes longer, then said good-bye. Winnie hid her face in the cushion. He had never before shown displeasure towards her. "It's your own fault," Mrs. Morris said stolidly. "If you hadn't been a little goose, you wouldn't have brought it on yourself. And I'll tell you what—if Miss Winton takes to coming here, it's got to be stopped somehow." "Why?" "He says so." Winnie sighed, as her one scrap of blue sky clouded over. But the difficulty did not arise. Doris was too much excited, too fully occupied, with the projected foreign trip, to have leisure for aught else. She did not forget her promise; and she still meant to go "some time." But the Squire had thrown cold water, and everything seemed to conspire to prevent her. When the time came to start with Mrs. Brutt, she had not again seen Winnie. CHAPTER XIV The Stranger DORIS wondered at herself. Only a fortnight and three days since she had left home! The almanack must surely be wrong. It looked like six weeks, at the very least. She was leaning idly out of her little bedroom window, surveying the hotel garden below, and the Rhone valley beyond, bounded by its stately mountain ramparts. Bex lies at the bottom of a tea-cup, closed in around by lofty heights, like the sides of the cup. She had always so longed to see Swiss mountains. And they were very grand, ineffably beautiful, clothed in pine-woods, streaked with ravines and valleys. Yet Doris, possessing her wish, was by no means in tip-top spirits. She tried to smother down a sense of flatness, of disappointment, and hummed a tune softly. But it would not do. Things were not all she had expected. That is to say—Mrs. Brutt was not! Doris was growing deadly tired of her companion's talk. It went on endlessly, like a babbling stream. In certain moods Doris herself could go on thus; but that was occasional. In Mrs. Brutt it was perpetual. By this time the girl knew all, and more than all, that there was to be known, about that lady's early charms, her relatives, her friends, her admirers, her conquests, the places she had seen, the people she had known, the dresses she had worn, the troubles she had endured, the illnesses she had survived. Once and again a little of this might have been interesting; but when it recurred day after day, with endless repetitions, patience was put to a severe test. And patience was not one of Doris's strong points. It seldom is with anyone of her age. It has to be slowly learnt, through years of strife. "I don't believe you know what you are going in for," Mrs. Winton had said. "It all sounds smooth. But you don't really know Mrs. Brutt. She is a woman who will have her own way; and you will be at her mercy. You need not suppose she will give up anything she wants, just to please you. If I'm not very much mistaken, you will soon wish yourself at home again."