But still there was no reply, and, taking his sister's hand, the admiral drew it through his arm. "Illness?" he said in a low growl. "Yes, the shivering fit of a coward or a cur." "It is not true!" cried Guest excitedly as a thought flashed across his brain. "I remember now: he had a heavy sum of money on the table when I was here, and--Great Heavens! is it that?" His manner was contagious, and his face conveyed his terrible thoughts to his companions. Miss Jerrold clung to her brother, and turned ghastly pale, while a look of horror contracted the old man's face. "You--you don't think--" he stammered. "I think the worst, or my poor friend would have been with us." "Man--for God's sake don't say that," gasped the admiral, as Guest stepped back to the full extent of the landing. "There is some mystery here." "Stop! What are you going to do?" cried Sir Mark, catching at his arm. "Stand aside, sir; I am going to burst open that door." CHAPTER SEVEN. TWO YEARS BEFORE. Blue sky, the bluest of blue water, margined with green and gold; gloriously rugged, steeply sloping pasture alps, dotted with picturesquely carved chalets, weatherworn by sun and rain to a rich, warm brown; higher up, the sehn hutte--the summer farmsteads of the peasants, round and about which graze gentle, soft-faced cows, each bearing its sweet-toned, musical bell. Again, higher still, grey crag and lightning-blasted granite, bare, repellant, and strange; upward still, and in nook and cranny patches of a dingy white, like the sweepings up of a great hailstorm; another thousand feet up, and the aching eyes dazzled by peak, fold, cushion, and plain of white--the eternal ice; and, above all, the glorious sun beaming down, melting from the snows a million tiny rivers, which whisper and sing as they carve channels for their courses and meet and coalesce to flow amicably down, or quarrel and rage and rush together, till, with a mighty, echoing roar, they plunge headlong down the rift in some mighty glacier, flow on for miles, and reappear at the foot turbid, milky, and laden with stone, to hurry headlong to their purification in the lovely lake below. Two hundred feet above that lake, on a broad shelf, stood the Hotel des Cerfs, a magnified chalet, and in the wooden balcony, leaning upon the carved rail, and gazing at the wondrous view across lake and meadow, up and away to the snow-covered mountains till they blended with the fleecy clouds, stood Myra Jerrold and Edie Perrin--cousins by birth, sisters by habit--revelling in their first visit to the land of ice peak, valley, and lake. "I could stand here, I think, forever, and never tire of drinking in the beauties of such a scene, Edie. It makes me so happy; and yet there are moments when the tears come into my eyes, and I feel sad." "Yes, I know, dear," replied Edie. "That's when you want your lunch or dinner. One feels faint." "How can you be so absurd?" cried Myra half reproachfully.