Helen smiled. She anticipated a certain amount of cross examination at the hands of residents in the hotel; but she saw no reason why the ordeal should begin so soon. "I must take my luck then," she said. "There ought to be plenty of carriages at St. Moritz." Without being positively rude, her new acquaintance could not repeat the question thus shirked. But she had other shafts in her quiver. "You will stay at the Kursaal, of course?" she said. "Yes." "A passing visit, or for a period? I ask because I am going there myself." "Oh, how nice! I am glad I have met you. I mean to remain at Maloja until the end of August." "Quite the right time. The rest of Switzerland is unbearable in August. You will find the hotel rather full. The Burnham-Joneses are there,--the tennis players, you know,--and General and Mrs. Wragg and their family, and the de la Veres, nominally husband and wife,--a most charming couple individually. Have you met the de la Veres? No? Well, don't be unhappy on Edith's account if Reginald flirts with you. She likes it." "But perhaps I might not like it," laughed Helen. "Ah, Reginald has such fascinating manners!" A sigh seemed to deplore the days of long ago, when Reginald's fascination might have displayed itself on her account. Again there was a break in the flow of talk, and Helen began to take an interest in the scenery. Not to be balked, her inquisitor searched in a _portmonnaie_ attached to her left wrist with a strap, and produced a card. "We may as well know each other's names," she cooed affably. "Here is my card." Helen read, "Mrs. H. de Courcy Vavasour, Villa Menini, Nice." "I am sorry," she said, with a friendly smile that might have disarmed prejudice, "but in the hurry of my departure from London I packed my cards in my registered baggage. My name is Helen Wynton." The eyeglasses went up once more. "Do you spell it with an I? Are you one of the Gloucestershire Wintons?" "No. I live in town; but my home is in Norfolk." "And whose party will you join at the Maloja?" Helen colored a little under this rigorous heckling. "As I have already told you, Mrs. Vavasour, I am alone," she said. "Indeed, I have come here to--to do some literary work." "For a newspaper?" "Yes." Mrs. Vavasour received this statement guardedly. If Helen was on the staff of an important journal there was something to be gained by being cited in her articles as one of the important persons "sojourning" in the Engadine. "It is really wonderful," she admitted, "how enterprising the great daily papers are nowadays." Helen, very new to a world of de Courcy Vavasours, and Wraggs, and Burnham-Joneses, forgave this hawklike pertinacity for sake of the apparent sympathy of her catechist. And she was painfully candid.