had swung about like a
weather-cock in April, the victim of a thousand and one impulses. That
morning he would have laughed had any one prophesied his presence here. He
had fought against the inclination strongly enough at first, but as hour
after hour went by his resolution weakened. His meeting Harrigan had been
a stroke of luck. Still, he would have come anyhow.

"Oh, yes; I am very fond of Como," he found himself replying mechanically
to Mrs. Harrigan. He gave up Rao as hopeless so far as coming to his
rescue was concerned. He began, despite his repugnance, to watch Nora.

"It is always a little cold in the higher Alps."

"I am very fond of climbing myself." Nora was laughing and jesting with
one of the English tennis players. Not for nothing had she been called a
great actress, he thought. It was not humanly possible that her heart was
under better control than his own; and yet his was pounding against his
ribs in a manner extremely disquieting. Never must he be left alone with
her; always must it be under circumstances like this, with people about,
and the more closely about the better. A game like this was far more
exciting than tiger-hunting. It was going to assume the characteristics of
a duel in which he, being the more advantageously placed, would succeed
eventually in wearing down her guard. Hereafter, wherever she went, there
must he also go: St. Petersburg or New York or London. And by and by the
reporters would hear of it, and there would be rumors which he would
neither deny nor affirm. Sport! He smiled, and the blood seemed to recede
from his throat and his heart-beats to grow normal.

And all the while Mrs. Harrigan was talking and he was replying; and she
thought him charming, whereas he had not formed any opinion of her at all,
nor later could remember a word of the conversation.

"Tea!" bawled the colonel. The verb had its distinct uses, and one
generally applied it to the colonel's outbursts without being depressed by
the feeling of inelegance.

There is invariably some slight hesitation in the selection of chairs
around a tea-table in the open. Nora scored the first point of this
singular battle by seizing the padre on one side and her father on the
other and pulling them down on the bench. It was adroit in two ways: it
put Courtlandt at a safe distance and in nowise offended the younger men,
who could find no cause for alarm in the close proximity of her two
fathers, the spiritual and the ph