Not one word of his personal belief crossed Spencer's lips during the talk with the guide. Rather did he impress on his angry and vengeful hearer that a forgotten scandal should be left in its tomb. He took this line, not that he posed as a moralist, but because he hated to acknowledge, even to himself, that he was helped in his wooing by Helen's horror of his rival's lapse from the standard every pure minded woman sets up in her ideal lover. Ethically, he might be wrong; in his conscience he was justified. He had suffered too grievously from every species of intrigue and calumny during his own career not to be ultra-sensitive in regard to the use of such agents. Yet, watching the bent and crippled old man waiting there in the snow, a sense of pity and mourning chilled his heart with ice cold touch. "If I were Stampa's son, if that dead girl were my sister, how would _I_ settle with Bower?" he asked, clenching his pipe firmly between his teeth. "Well, I could only ask God to be merciful both to him and to me." "Good gracious, Mr. Spencer! why that fierce gaze at our delightful valley?" came the voice of Mrs. de la Vere. "I am glad none of us can give you the address of the Swiss clerk of the weather--or you would surely slay him." He turned. Convention demanded a smile and a polite greeting; but Spencer was not conventional. "You are a thought reader, Mrs. de la Vere," he said. "'One of my many attractions,' you should have added." "I find this limpid light too critical." "Oh, what a horrid thing to tell any woman, especially in the early morning!" "I have a wretched habit of putting the second part of a sentence first. I really intended to say--but it is too late." "It is rather like swallowing the sugar coating after the pill; but I'll try." "Well, then, this crystal atmosphere does not lend itself to the obvious. If we were in London, I should catalogue your bewitchments lest you imagined I was blind to them." "That sounds nice, but----" "It demands analysis, so I have failed doubly." "I don't feel up to talking like a character in one of Henry James's novels. And you were much more amusing last night. Have you seen Miss Jaques this morning?" "No. That is, I don't think so." "Do you know her?" "No." "It would be a kind thing if someone told her that there are other places in Switzerland where she will command the general admiration she deserves." "I am inclined to believe that there is a man in the hotel who can put that notion before her delicately." Spencer possessed the unchanging gravity of expression that the whole American race seems to have borrowed from the Red Indian. Mrs. de la Vere's eyes twinkled as she gazed at him. "You didn't hear what was said last night," she murmured. "Where Millicent Jaques is concerned, delicacy is absent from Mr. Bower's make-up--is that good New York?" "It would be understood."