and talk at the same time, he boldly made the attempt.

"Stampa was the genius who really unraveled the mystery," he said.
"Certainly, I managed to discover, in the first instance, that you had
deposited your baggage in your own name. Had all else failed, I should
have converted myself into a label and stuck to your boxes till you
claimed them at Basle; but once we ascertained that you had not
quitted St. Moritz by train, Stampa did the rest. He knows St. Moritz
like a book, and it occurred to him that you had changed your
name----"

"Why, I wonder?" she broke in.

"That is rather hard to say." He wrestled valiantly with the leg of a
tough chicken, and thus was able to evade the question.

Poor Stampa! clinging tenaciously to the belief that Helen bore some
resemblance to his lost daughter, remembered that when Etta made her
sorrowful journey from Zermatt she gave another name at the little
hostelry in Maloja where she ended her life.

"Anyhow," went on Spencer, having dexterously severed the joint, "he
tracked you from St. Moritz to the Roseg. He even hit on the shop in
which you bought your rucksack and alpenstock. Then he put me on to
the telephone, and the remainder of the chase was up to me."

"I am sorry now that the dear old man did not come with you," cried
Helen. "I look on him as the first of my friends in Switzerland, and
shall be more than pleased to see him again."

"I pressed him to come along; but he refused. I don't wish to pain
you, dearest, but I guess he wants to keep track of Bower."

Helen, who had no inkling of the tragedy that linked those two,
blushed to her ears at the recollection of her parting from the
millionaire.

"Do you--do you know that Mr. Bower proposed to me?" she stammered.

"He told me that, and a lot more."

"Did you quarrel?"

"We--said things. But I couldn't treat Bower as I handled Georgie. I
was forced to admit his good taste, you see."

"Well, dear, promise me----"

"That I sha'n't slay him! Why, Helen, if he is half the man I take him
for, he will come to our wedding. I told Mrs. de la Vere I should
bring you back, and she agreed that there was nothing else to be
done."

The color ebbed and flowed on Helen's face at an alarming rate. "What
in the world are you talking about?" she asked, with a calm severity
that her fluttering heart denied.

Spencer laughed so happily that Pietro, who understood no word of what
his voyageurs were saying, gave Bartelommeo