Three Weeks

Next day they went to the Bürgenstock to stay. It was all arranged with consummate simplicity. Paul was to start for a climb, he told his valet, and for a week they would leave Lucerne. Mme. Zalenska was not very well, it appeared, and consented to try, at the suggestion of the amiable manager--inspired by Dmitry--a few days in higher air. There would not be a soul in their hotel on top of the Bürgenstock probably, and she could have complete rest.

They did not arrive together, Paul was the first. He had not seen her. Dmitry had given him his final instructions, and he awaited her coming with passionate impatience.

He had written to her, on awaking, a coherent torrent of love, marvellously unlike the letter which had gone to poor Isabella only a few days before. In this to his lady he had said he could not bear it now, the uncertainty of seeing her, and had suggested the Bürgenstock crudely, without any of the clever details which afterwards made it possible.

He--Paul Verdayne, not quite twenty-three years old, and English--to suggest without a backward thought or a qualm that a lady whom he had known five days should come and live with him and be his love! None of his friends accustomed to his bashful habits would have believed it. Only his father perhaps might have smiled.

As for the Lady Henrietta, she would have fainted on the spot. But fortune favoured him--they did not know.

No excitement of the wildest day's hunting had ever made his pulses bound like this! Dmitry had arranged everything. Paul was a young English secretary to Madame, who had much writing to do. And in any case it is not the affair of respectable foreign hotels to pry into their clients' relationship when a large suite has been engaged.

Paul's valet, the son of an old retainer of the family, was an honest fellow, and devoted to his master--but Sir Charles Verdayne had decided to make things doubly sure.

"Tompson," he had said, the morning before they left, "however Mr. Verdayne may amuse himself while you are abroad, your eyes and mouth are shut, remember. No d----d gossip back to the servants here, or in hotels, or houses--and, above all, no details must ever reach her Ladyship. If he gets into any thundering mess let me know--but mum's the word, d'y understand, Tompson?"

"I do, Sir Charles," said Tompson, stolidly.

And he did, as events proved.

The rooms on the Bürgenstock looked so simple, so unlike the sitting-room at Lucerne! Just fresh and clean and primitive. Paul wandered through them, and in the one allotted to himself he came upon Anna--Madame's maid, whom Dmitry had pointed out to him--putting sheets as fine as gossamer on his bed; with the softest down pillows. How dear of his lady to think thus of him!--her secretary.