"You see," he said—and Lily saw nothing but the humour of it—"you see it’s this way. Dick’s a sentimentalist, and I’m a philosopher, and we’ve tumbled into the same boat somehow. I would like to marry Nellie if I could make her happy, and all that sort of thing; but it’s rotten beginning on two hundred a year, and Dick’s only got a hundred and ninety. Now what I feel is this: Is it quite fair to the girls?" "Did you think of that when you proposed to them this morning?" Dick shook his head. "I was never more in love in my life," he said. "I forgot everything else in heaven or earth but Marjory. I would marry her to-morrow, if it wasn’t for the beastly cash." "And you, Mr. Otway?" "I say the same, but I don’t think I should care to begin so soon. She might give me a year’s grace." Lily nodded her head; she understood now. "I think you will have your year," she said a little merrily. "To tell you the truth, Mr. Otway, I should not be surprised if you remained a bachelor. As to Mr. Fenton, well, I think that will depend upon Mrs. Rider. Would you like me to speak to her for you, for both of you if you wish it?" They jumped at the idea. She was a regular brick, and so very much superior to anyone at Andana that the thing was as good as done if she became their ambassador. The promise put them in the seventh heaven. "If she says ’No,’ we can let bygones be bygones," Bob added enthusiastically. "I will treat Nellie as a sister, and the hotel need know nothing about it. You don’t know what a load you’ve taken off my back, Mrs. Kennaird; I shall never forget it." She rejoined that it was a pleasure to help two silly boys in love, and having said it, the boys in their turn perceived that the interview must terminate. Reluctantly, they shook hands with her, and then, as she stood with them a moment at the door of the chalet, Dick Fenton remarked the presence of two gendarmes, who were going up toward Vermala, carrying lanterns in their hands. He bethought him immediately of the comic-tragedy of the morning, and began to tell her about it, just to show that he could speak of other things than matrimony. "They say there’s been a murder up in the woods," he declared cheerfully; "that’s the very latest intelligence at Vermala. Bob saw an Englishman being followed by one of the Swiss police, and he heard a weird cry a little while afterwards. Then we met an old Frenchman, who declared that he saw the gendarme fall on the slope below the Zaat. Those fellows would be going up to look for him, I suppose. There’ll be a pretty hullabaloo if they find him." She did not speak a word; they mistook her silence for lack of interest, and fearing to stay longer, said "good night" once more, and went with boyish steps down the hillside together. *CHAPTER XI* *THE VIGIL OF TRAGEDY*