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No d d gossip back to the servants here, or in hotels, or houses and, above all, no details must ever reach her Ladyship. If he gets into any thundering mess let me know but mum's the word, d'y understand, Tompson?" "I do, Sir Charles," said Tompson, stolidly. And he did, as events proved. The rooms on the Buergenstock looked so simple, so unlike the sitting-room at Lucerne!
His lady had never been more sweet; it was as if this wayward Undine had at last found her soul, and lay conquered and unresisting in her lover's strong arms. Thus in perfect peace and happiness they; passed their last night on the Buergenstock.
It was pouring with rain when he drove from the station to the hotel. His temper was at its worst. Pilatus hid his head in mist, the Buergenstock was invisible it was chilly, too, and the fire smoked in the sitting-room when Paul had it lighted. His heart yearned for his own snug room at Verdayne Place, and the jolly voice of Isabella Waring counting point, quint and quatorze.
Gentle, pleasant women longed to lavish worship upon him, and Paul talked and was polite, but all their sweetness touched him no more than summer ripples stir the bottom of a lake. He seemed impervious to any human influence, though when the look of a mountain or the colour of beech-trees would remind him of the Buergenstock anguish as fresh as ever stabbed his heart.
The appearance of the Buergenstock across the lake attracted him, as afterwards he smoked another cigar under the trees. He would hire an electric launch and go there and explore the paths. If only Pike were with him or Isabella! This idea he put into execution. What a thing was a funicular railway. How steep and unpleasant, but how quaint the tree-tops looked when one was up among them.
Yet he was convinced this was not one of them. Who could she be? He must know. To go back to the hotel would be the shortest way to find out, and so by the next descending train he left the Buergenstock. He walked up and down under the lime-trees outside the terrace of her rooms for half an hour, but was not rewarded in any way for his pains. And at last he went in.
There would not be a soul in their hotel on top of the Buergenstock probably, and she could have complete rest. They did not arrive together, Paul was the first. He had not seen her. Dmitry had given him his final instructions, and he awaited her coming with passionate impatience.
"I suddenly feel I want so much I want to know why your eyes were so mocking through the trees on the Buergenstock? They drove me nearly mad, you know, and I raced about after you like a dog after a hare!" "I thought you would you did not control the expression when you gazed up at me! And so I was the true hare and ran away!"
Paul could hardly bear his lady out of his sight, even while she dressed for dinner, when they got back to the Buergenstock, and twice he came to the door and asked plaintively how long she would be, until Anna took pity on him, and implored to be allowed to ask him to come in while she finished her mistress's hair. And that was a joy to Paul!
Dmitry had drawn back the curtains and extinguished the lights, and only the brilliant moon lit the scene; a splendid moon, two nights from the full. There she shone straight down upon them to welcome them to this City of Romance. What loveliness met Paul's view! A loveliness in which art and nature blended in one satisfying whole. "Darling," he said, "this is better than the Buergenstock.
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