“Well, what you can see to admire in her I can’t imagine, and her dress! why those sleeves might have come out of the ark. Oh you didn’t notice them. How curious men are.” Next came a pair of lovers. “Dearest!” said one voice. “My own!” replied the other. And Dick Lewisham cruelly coughed. After which dead silence reigned. By and bye a mellow, manly voice startled him into keen attention; it was Bruce Wylie. “I’ll propose to her to-morrow whatever happens. You can give the others just a hint and they will keep out of the way. We must have matters settled before leaving Switzerland. If she refuses me----” “Why then,” said Sir Matthew Mactavish, “I shall step in with the authority of a guardian. We will have no nonsense about the matter. But she will not refuse you. She has too much good sense.” The voices died away in the distance. Dick Lewisham laughed long and silently. “So that is your game, my fine friend! It is you who are after little Miss Ewart’s money though you have had the slander set afloat that I was a fortune-hunter. Ho! ho!” he rubbed his hands with satisfaction, “how I should like to see your face when that little blue-eyed girl rejects you. I’ll at any rate stay on here to see you when you return.” He was loitering about at the cable railway station the next morning when Evereld and Janet Mactavish walked from the hotel to take their places in the down-going carriage. “And where are you off to this morning?” he inquired. “We are going to see the Gorge de Trient,” said Evereld, “at least some of us are. You are going to sketch near that waterfall, are you not, Janet.” “Yes,” said Janet, “but Major Gillot and Minnie and Mr. Wylie will be with you. Four makes a much better number and I want a quiet day.” Dick Lewisham laughed in his sleeve, he felt sure that Janet had been taken into the plot. Then with some compunction he glanced at Evereld’s unsuspicious face; her manner to him was perfect, he felt glad to think that she trusted him, and wondered much in what fashion she would get through the excursion. It was hardly likely he feared to be a day of pleasure to her. They were now joined by Minnie and her _fiancé_, and at the last moment Bruce Wylie walked coolly across the little platform and down the steps, taking his place just before the carriage slid down its steep incline. “Oh be quick! take care!” said Evereld with a look of alarm; and Dick Lewisham turned away, musing over the words and the expression of the girl’s face. “Evidently she likes him very much as an old friend,” he reflected. “I wonder how she will get on.” CHAPTER XXIV “To hug the wealth ye cannot use, And lack the riches all may gain, O blind and wanting wit to choose, Who house the chaff and burn the grain! And still doth life with starry towers Lure to the bright divine ascent!