Sylvia, and brought her mother up on her elbow again.
"It struck me that the old lady must be some great lady of a past day.
The man bowed to you and--"

She stopped abruptly, but her mother completed the sentence with a
vindictiveness she made little effort to conceal.

"And the great lady did not, but stared in the way great ladies have.
Yes, I had met the man--once--in Paris," and she lay back again upon her
pillow, watching her daughter. But Sylvia showed no curiosity and no
pain. It was not the first time when people passed her mother that she
had seen the man bow and the woman ignore. Rather she had come to expect
it. She took her book from her berth and opened it.

Mrs. Thesiger was satisfied. Sylvia clearly did not suspect that it was
just the appearance of that stiff, old-fashioned couple which had driven
her out of Trouville a good month before her time--her, Mrs. Thesiger of
the many friends. She fell to wondering what in the world had brought
M. de Camours and his mother to that watering place amongst the brilliant
and the painted women. She laughed again at the odd picture they had
made, and her thoughts went back over twenty years to the time when she
had been the wife of M. de Camours in the chateau overlooking the village
in Provence, and M. de Camours' mother had watched her with an unceasing
jealousy. Much had happened since those days. Madame de Camours'
watchings had not been in vain, a decree had been obtained from the Pope
annulling the marriage. Much had happened. But even after twenty years
the memory of that formal life in the Provencal chateau was vivid enough;
and Mrs. Thesiger yawned. Then she laughed. Monsieur de Camours and his
mother had always been able to make people yawn.

"So you are glad that we are going to Chamonix, Sylvia--so glad that you
couldn't sleep?"

"Yes."

It sounded rather unaccountable to Mrs. Thesiger, but then Sylvia was to
her a rather unaccountable child. She turned her face to the wall and
fell asleep.

Sylvia's explanation, however, happened to be true. Chamonix meant the
great range of Mont Blanc, and Sylvia Thesiger had the passion for
mountains in her blood. The first appearance of their distant snows
stirred her as no emotion ever had, so that she came to date her life by
these appearances rather than by the calendar of months and days. The
morning when from the hotel windows at Glion she had first seen the twin
peaks of the Dent du Midi towering in si