"I need not apologise for writing again so soon. You will have missed, as I have, our close intercourse; and you will be expecting another letter." But she had not missed him, she told herself indignantly; not in the very least; and their intercourse had not been "close;" and she had not expected another letter. She had not thought about him at all. What business had he to feel so sure that she wanted him? She didn't want him. It was quite a relief to escape his lectures on geology. She put the letter into her pocket, and set off at a good pace, resolved to find some quiet retreat, where she could read it at leisure, and could try to analyse her own state of mind, which plainly needed dissection. Missed him indeed! What nonsense! Nothing of the kind! She held her head high, and went on with lithe and easy carriage,— a pretty picture in her shady hat. Somebody in the hotel she had left watched her from a top window, as long as she was in sight. Possibly it might have been that steadfast gaze which conjured up a vision in her mind of a pair of grey eyes—dark-grey, earnest, solicitous—side by side with Hamilton's impassive features. She gazed at the two together. "He's awfully nice," she murmured, not in reference to the early admirer. And then—"Missed him indeed! It's like his cheek! I've not missed him. I've never thought about him at all." Leaving the village street behind, she went along the shady main road for a short distance; the hill uprising to her right, the wide valley down-dropping to her left. A châlet close to the road drew attention. It was of pale brown wood, lately built, and not yet burnt by the sun to a deep red-brown, like other châlets. Carved balconies adorned the front and ran round the sides; and the pointed roof had deep overhanging eaves. Several pines grew in the garden, and on a bench outside the front door lay a book. She was interested, for someone had told her, the day before, that it was taken by un Monsieur Anglais, and his young wife. Perhaps she would get to know them. A little later she turned off to the right along a grass-path, which led slanting upward; and then she found herself in a meadow of long grass, specked with flowers, and thronged with thousands of grasshoppers and crickets. When she bent for a closer study of them, one after another, poised on the tip of a grass-blade, seemed to survey her with its big uncanny eyes, before taking a leap—literally a flying leap!—to another spot, yards away. Still to her right, as she went, the grassy hill rose steep and high; and on her left, beyond the road, the valley descended, with green ranges beyond, and behind them vast mountains of bare rock. To the front, across the fore-shortened Rhone valley, where flowed the historic river as a slender muddy ribbon, she could see the great spreading skirts and massive ridges of the Dent du Midi.