“Didn’t he come rather to grief once and have to go abroad for a time?” said Fordham, meditatively trimming the ash of his cigar with his thumbnail. “Phil never mentioned it, but I seem to remember the case some twenty years back.”
“Oh, you remember it?” said the General, looking furtively around and lowering his voice. “Well, it wasn’t a ‘case’ exactly—never came to that, luckily. But there was the devil of a scandal, and Orlebar went abroad for a time. It was said that he went to exchange shots with the injured party, and I believe he did, but whether either of them winged his man I’ll be hanged if I know.”
On one of the benches in the forepart of the hurricane deck, gazing dreamily at the great wooded slopes sliding by as the steamer passed the storm-beaten walls of grim Chillon, revelling in the gorgeous magnificence of the flying scenery while keeping an ear for her companion’s remarks, sat Alma Wyatt.
“Do you know you answered me quite at random?” said Philip, with a laugh.
“Did I? Oh, how rude of me! But—you must make allowances. I find it quite impossible to take my attention entirely off these lovely shores and the mountains changing every minute as we go rushing through the water. Look at them—all green and gold in this exquisite sunlight! Look at the dazzling white of the Dent du Midi there, in sharp contrast to the vivid blue of the sky! And the lake—I have just counted no less than thirteen different shades on its surface where each tiny catspaw of wind sweeps it—thirteen, from the richest ultramarine to gold and plum colour and scarlet. There, I am very gushing—am I not?—and you may laugh at me accordingly.”
“I certainly shall do nothing of the sort,” he replied, eagerly. “Do you suppose I am such a boor, such a Vandal that I can’t enter into your ideas? Perhaps I was thinking just the same things, only could not for the life of me express myself so beautifully.”
She looked him steadily in the face for a moment as though to read his thoughts, as though to detect the slightest trace of make-believe about his reply. But his tones rang true and she was satisfied.
“Then I shall proceed with my gush, and really end in making you laugh,” she resumed. “But I do think that this eastern end of the Lake of Geneva must have been hewn out of a corner of Paradise.”
“And yet, there stands an eternal reminder to the contrary,” he replied, pointing to the grim towers of Chillon which lay mirrored in clear-cut reflection upon the sapphire waters. “Think of the numberless wretches racked and thumbscrewed and burnt within those walls in past centuries. Have you so soon forgotten that ghastly oubliette they were driven down under a fraudulent promise of liberty? It is said that remains occasionally come to light even to this day.”
“Ah, now you have drawn a sort of black line across my fair picture. You are upsetting my ideal just as Mr Fordham kept trying to do the other day when we were going over the castle. Do you remember he pronounced the torture stake a fraud of the first magnitude, declaring that it had been renewed since he visited Chillon five years ago, and that Byron’s name on the pillar in Bonivard’s dungeon was probably a despicable sham and the work of some latter-day ’Arry?”