'But Dane,' Mrs. Coles said despairingly, 'you are flying in the face of Society.' 'Mistaken, Prue; _my_ face is turned in quite another direction,' said Dane with a slight glance at his wife which conveyed very merry and sweet private intelligence. He had just received a small parcel from Byrom, and was unrolling it in his hands; which also drew Mrs. Coles' attention and stopped the flow of her arguments. When the last fold of soft paper came off, there appeared a tiny clock; so tiny that at first nobody understood what it was; but as Dane set it upon the mantelpiece it struck the hour. The notes were like silver bells, so liquid, clear and musical, that there was a general exclamation of delight. 'My dear Dane? what is that?' exclaimed his interlocutor. 'Hazel's travelling clock.' "Hazel's travelling clock!—Where is she going?' 'Wherever I go,' said Dane coolly. 'But where are _you_ going? I thought your hands were full with your mills.' 'Just now they are rather full.' 'Won't they be full a long time, Duke?' said Primrose. 'Perhaps. But when I get things in order, then I shall go, if I can.' 'Where?' asked Mrs. Coles. 'In general—to see the midnight sun, and the moonlight on Milan.' 'You have been there before.' 'Just why I want to go there again,' said Rollo, while his eye came furtively over to Wych Hazel with a sparkle in it. And he went on.—'I know a little lake in the Bavarian mountains. It lies in the midst of the tall stems of ancient forest trees. The water is so clear that you can see the small stones at the bottom, sixty feet down. Above the lake and above the tops of the trees, you eye can reach the mountain walls of rock towering thousands of feet up, bearing their everlasting snow fields. Then if you look down, you see in the water the reflection of a cross that stands on the summit of one of the mountains; the Zug-spitze. And the whole little lake, to use the expression of an enthusiastic German , is "as green as the dewdrop on a lettuce leaf." ' 'My dear Dane!' said Mrs. Coles in bewilderment. '_Where_ is it?' 'In Bavaria.' 'That's in Germany, isn't it? Have you ever been there?' 'How else should I know how green it is?' said Dane, who had now got into his manner of lazy apathy. 'And why do you want to take Hazel there?' Mrs. Coles went on. 'I would like her to see how green it is. I shall not take her to the place where the cross stands on the Zug-spitze—though I have been there too; for her head might turn. But I will take her a half- day's walk from Windisch-matrei to G' schlöss, instead.' 'What is there, Duke?' asked Primrose, for Hazel did not speak. 'That is called the German Chamounix. The fields of blue ice come down almost to the bottom of the valley.' 'And is it pretty?' 'Chamounix is reckoned so.' 'I should think you would go to the real Chamounix, while you are about it,' remarked Mrs. Coles.