again. If there were reasons, he
could not know them. There was no getting over it yet. They were to
start betimes in the morning, and sleep that night at Brattebo, which
is the hithermost spur of the chain. Dinner and beds had been ordered
at Odde, beyond the snow-field.

Dinner was a gay affair. They toasted the now declared lovers. True to
his cornering instincts, Lingen had told Lucy all about it in the
afternoon. "Your sympathy means so much to me--and Margery, whose mind
is exquisitely sensitive, is only waiting your nod to be at your feet,
with me."

"I should be very sorry to see either of you there," Lucy said. "I'm
very fond of her and I shouldn't take it at all kindly if she demeaned
herself. When do you think of marrying?"

He looked at her appealingly. "I must have time," he said; "time to
build the nest."

"A flat, I suppose," she said, declining such poetical flights.

"A flat!" said Francis Lingen. "Really, it hadn't occurred to me."

From Lucy the news went abroad, and so the dinner was gay. Urquhart
confined himself to the two boys, and told them about the
Folgefond--of its unknown depth, of the crevasses, of the glacier on
its western edge, of certain white snakes, bred by the snow, which
might be found there. Their bite was death, he said.

"Frost-bite," said Patrick Nugent, who knew his uncle's way; but
Lancelot favoured his mother.

"Hoo!" he said. "I expect that you'd give him what for. One blow of
your sword and his head would lie at your feet."

"That's nasty, too," said Urquhart. "They have white blood, I
believe." Lancelot blinked.

"Beastly," he said. "Did Mamma hear you? You'd better not tell her.
She hates whiteness. Secretly--so do I, rather."

It was afterwards, when the boys had gone to bed, that a seriousness
fell upon those of them who were given to seriousness. James and Vera
Nugent settled down squarely to piquet. Francis Lingen murmured to his
affianced bride.

"I don't disguise from myself--and from you I can have no
secrets--that there is danger in the walk. The snow is very
treacherous at this season. We take ropes, of course. Urquhart is said
to know the place; but Urquhart is--"

"He's very fascinating," said Margery Dacre, and Francis lifted his
eyebrows.

"You find that? Then I am distressed. I would share everything with
you if I could. To me, I don't know why, there is something
crude--some harsh note--a clangour of metal. I find him brazen--at
times. B