*AT THE HOSPICE* It was three in the morning when Bajazet turned into the yard of the Hôtel de Ville at Domo d’Ossola and ordered a sleepy ostler to prepare horses for Brigue. In summer the place would have been wide awake enough even at such an hour, for the summer would have found it alive with motorists about to cross the pass according to the regulations which forbid them to travel at the height of the day. But being the month of February, the town was as silent as the grave when the carriage drove in, and even the ostler could be discovered with difficulty. When twenty questions had recalled his understanding, he remembered that an Englishman had set out for Brigue yesterday, but had no idea who he was. His description, however, answered to that of Luton Delayne, and Benny quickly came to the conclusion that the baronet had persisted in his madness, and had returned to Switzerland upon an impulse no one else might pretend to understand. And yet, was it so difficult to be understood? Luton Delayne knew the best and the worst that life had in store for him. Of all his fortune, good or ill, fortune of character and of possessions, there remained to him but the supreme desire to seek out the woman who had been his wife, and to throw himself upon her pity. Desperately, and with almost a child’s trust, he had come to believe that she would save him. The unanswered letter, the hours of loneliness by the lakeside, the alternations of hope and despair, so drove him at the last, that, flinging all reason to the winds, he determined to go to her and hear the worst. And he had set off immediately when the abbé sent him a warning message. What mattered it, if he could win a hearing from her? The good that was in him claimed audience now. He believed that she would judge him lightly if all were known; and, determined that it should be known, he drove to Iselle and the pass. Perhaps Benny guessed something of this when he commanded horses for the journey to Brigue, and announced his determination to depart immediately. He understood men in many moods, and could almost sympathise with this broken man who thus flung down the gauntlet to the world and did not stop to consider that it might be picked up—not by a chivalrous enemy, but by the police. For himself, his task was plain, and events had not changed the trend of it. He would save Luton Delayne from a public exposure if he could, and would save him for the woman’s sake. What happened afterwards must be as destiny decided. It would be enough for him that he had done his duty to one who claimed his friendship, and for whom he would measure no sacrifice.