Chauvet put by these brief lines very preciously in the safe where he kept his jewels,--“Affectionately yours” was a great consolation, he thought!--they almost touched the verge of tenderness!--there was surely hope for him! And he amused himself in his solitary hours with the drawing of an exquisite design for a small coronal to be worn in Diana’s hair, wherein he purposed having some of his rarest jewels set in a fashion of his own. Meanwhile the frozen stillness of an exceptionally dreary and bitter winter enveloped the Château Fragonard and its beautiful gardens, and no one was ever seen to go to it, or come from it, though there were certain residents on the opposite side of the lake who could perceive its roof and chimneys through the leafless trees and who declared that its great glass dome was always more or less illumined as though a light were constantly kept burning within. Rumour was busy at first with all sorts of suggestions and contradictions, but as there appeared to be no foundation for any one of them, the talk gradually wore itself out, most people being always too much interested in themselves to keep up any interest in others for long. But, had Rumour a million eyes, as it is said to have a million tongues, it might well have had occasion to use them all during the full swing of that particular “season” at Davos Platz, where, in the “winter sports” and gaieties of the time, Diana was an admired “belle” and universal favourite. She, who only three or four months previously had been distinctly “on the shelf” or “in the way,” was now flattered and sought after by a whole train of male admirers, who apparently could never have enough of her society. She conversed brilliantly, danced exquisitely, and skated perfectly,--so perfectly indeed that one fatuous elderly gentleman nicknamed her “the Ice Queen,” and another, younger but not less enterprising, addressed her as “_Boule de Neige_,” conceiving the title prettier in French than in rough English as “Snowball.” She accepted the attentions lavished upon her with amused indifference, which made her still more attractive to men whose “sporting” tendencies are invariably sharpened by obstacles in the way of securing their game, and, much to her own interest, found herself the centre of all sorts of rivalries and jealousies. “If they only knew my age!” she thought one day. “If they only knew!”