ertain pleading hesitation in her words, began at once to restore his
self-command. "Do not talk of it any further, I beg of you," she went
on. "We--we have been lagging behind unconscionably. If you wish to
please me, let us hurry forward now. And please!--no more talk at all!"

"But just a word--you're not angry?"

She shook her head very slightly.

"And you do know that I'm your friend--your solid, twenty-four-carat
friend?"

After a moment's pause, she made answer, almost in a whisper--"Yes--be
my friend--if it amuses you,"--and led the way with precipitate steps
down the winding road.

CHAPTER XIII

TWO days later, Thorpe and his young people took an early morning train
for Geneva--homeward bound.

It was entirely easy to accept their uncle's declaration that urgent
business summoned him to London, yet Julia and Alfred, when they chanced
to exchange glances after the announcement, read in each other's eyes
the formless impression that there were other things beside business.
Their uncle, they realized, must be concerned in large and probably
venturesome enterprises; but it did not fit with their conception of his
character that commercial anxieties should possess the power to upset
him. And upset he undeniably was.

They traced his disturbance, in a general way, to the morning following
the excursion up to Glion and Caux. He told them then that he had slept
very badly, and that they must "count him out" of their plans for the
day. He continued to be counted out of what remained of their stay
at Territet. He professed not to be ill, but he was restless and
preoccupied. He ate little, but smoked continuously, and drank spirits
a good deal, which they had not seen him do before. Nothing would induce
him to go out either day.

Strangely enough, this disturbance of their uncle's equanimity
synchronized with an apparent change in the attitude of their new
friends on the floor below. This change was, indeed, more apparent
than definable. The ladies were, to the nicest scrutiny, as kindly and
affable as ever, but the sense of comradeship had somehow vanished.
Insensibly, the two parties had ceased to have impulses and tastes in
common. There were no more trips together--no more fortuitous luncheons
or formal dinners as a group.

The young people looked up at the front of the big hotel on this
morning of departure, after they had clambered over the drifts into the
snow-bedecked train, and opened the win