gradually lifted off his shoulders as he watched the
wheels of the vehicle churning up the brown snow broth along the
valley road. Within two hours his message would reach a telegraph
office. Two more would bring it to Mackenzie. With reasonable luck,
the line repairers would link Maloja to the outer world that
afternoon, and Helen would hie homeward in the morning. It was a pity
that her holiday and his wooing should be interfered with; but who
could have foretold that Millicent Jaques would drop from the sky in
that unheralded way? Her probable interference in the quarrel between
Stampa and Bower put Mrs. de la Vere's suggestion out of court. A
woman bent on requiting a personal slight would never consent to
forego such a chance of obtaining ample vengeance as Bower's earlier
history provided.

In any case, Spencer was sure that the sooner Helen and he were
removed from their present environment the happier they would be. He
hoped most fervently that the course of events might be made smooth
for their departure. He cared not a jot for the tittle-tattle of the
hotel. Let him but see Helen re-established in London, and it would
not be his fault if they did not set forth on their honeymoon before
the year was much older.

He disliked this secret plotting and contriving. He adopted such
methods only because they offered the surest road to success. Were he
to consult his own feelings, he would go straight to Helen, tell her
how chance had conspired with vagrom fancy to bring them together, and
ask her to believe, as all who love are ready to believe, that their
union was predestined throughout the ages.

But he could not explain his presence in Switzerland without referring
to Bower, and the task was eminently distasteful. In all things
concerning the future relations between Helen and himself, he was done
with pretense. If he could help it, her first visit to the Alps should
not have its record darkened by the few miserable pages torn out of
Bower's life. After many years the man's sin had discovered him. That
which was then done in secret was now about to be shrieked aloud from
the housetops. "Even the gods cannot undo the past," said the old
Greeks, and the stern dogma had lost nothing of its truth with the
march of the centuries. Indeed, Spencer regretted his rival's
threatened exposure. If it lay in his power, he would prevent it:
meanwhile, Helen must be snatched from the enduring knowledge of her
innocent associ