And now he had followed her to Switzerland, and unquestionably would visit her at Andana. What shameful story lay behind the pursuit she could not imagine; but of the existence of such a story she was sure. Luton Delayne rarely troubled her unless his case were desperate—and desperate indeed it must be for him to abandon the purlieus of Monte Carlo at such a season. She resolved, upon her part, to refuse him audience if that were possible; and if it were not possible, then to summon all her courage and insist that this interview should be final. The day for compromise was past. It had been her promise to the parson, Harry Clavering, that she would submit to the ordeal of the skis on this morning; and when, with Kavanagh, she met him on the veranda of the hotel, he reminded her pleasantly of her obligations. Unwilling to disappoint, she professed her readiness to face the ordeal, and skis having been commanded from the hotel porter, the parson upon one side and Kavanagh upon the other set to work to imprison the smallest pair of feet in Andana and to tell the owner the news while they did so. "You’ve heard that the ghost has been seen?" asked Clavering, a little excitedly. She shook her head incredulously. "Oh, but it’s quite true. Miss Nellie Rider saw it from her bedroom window and so did her sister. Sir Gordon Snagg is another. He declares it was a man in a flying machine. I shouldn’t wonder if he were right." Kavanagh was of this opinion. "There are fools in the world who will do anything," he said. "Some idiot out of Hanwell may have brought his aeroplane here to scare the natives; and jolly well he’s succeeded. I hope he may break his neck, that’s all. He deserves to, that’s sure." He thought that the "little widow" would agree with him as a matter of course, and her answer rather astonished him. "Then you think that pioneers are very wicked people?" she remarked; "you have no sympathy with them, Mr. Kavanagh?" "Oh, I won’t say that—good for science and all that sort of thing. What I mean is, let’s keep the mountains anyway. We don’t want ginger-beer bottles on our heads up here—do we now? I’m sure Mr. Clavering agrees to that." The parson dissented altogether. "I think it would be a brave thing to fly here," he said quietly, "a very brave thing. And I hope the day when we cannot admire courage is distant. If there had been no pioneers in the world, I should not be travelling through the Simplon Tunnel to Bellagio in three weeks’ time, and you would not be smoking that excellent tobacco. If there is an aeroplane at Andana, it must be owned by one of the men who is about to fly for the great prize offered by the English daily paper. I hope he will win it." "But you wouldn’t go up in one yourself?" Kavanagh insisted. "Not for a thousand sovereigns, poor as I am."