Arthur could not analyze character. He did not sufficiently understand human nature's diversity to be able to explain to himself why this child was so different from other children, but he felt it; and stronger almost than his longing to restore Maurice Grey to faith in his wife's perfections became his desire to rescue that child from him who had taken her, he firmly believed, with some bad motive, and to lead her back to her mother.
The strange thing was that she loved this man (for Petrovski had so impressed Arthur with a belief in his veracity that once more he had settled with himself the identity of Laura's companion). Could it be, then, that there was some good even in him? But Arthur would not follow out this line of reasoning. He was more than ever confirmed in his hatred of L'Estrange.
"There is something in the Bible," he said to himself, "about Satan putting on the form of an angel of light. This man has only followed the example of his forerunner in all evil. He is deceiving the innocent darling, and she thinks him good."
He was driving in an open sledge—for the season was late and snow had begun to fall on the mountains—when these thoughts crowded in upon his brain.
It was tolerably cold in these high latitudes, but the young man was wrapped up in a fur-lined travelling cloak, the thick leather apron of the sledge covered his knees, and a cigar emitting fragrant blue clouds, whose ascent into the pure air he watched curiously, was between his lips.
Arthur Forrest had not been bred in Belgravia altogether in vain. He understood very thoroughly how to make himself comfortable.
In this thing he considered himself fortunate. The crowd of Britons that yearly fill the Swiss solitudes with their all-engrossing presence had fled at the first breath of winter, "like doves to their windows."
Two or three hardy Swiss returning to their mountains, an adventurous German desirous of studying the aspect of Switzerland in winter, a Pole who wished to put the mountains, soon to be an almost impassable barrier, between himself and his enemies, the vigilant and all-powerful Russian police,—these, with a conductor and driver, formed the whole of the small cavalcade that crossed the St. Gothard on this bleak autumnal day.
In spite of the glorious scenes through which they had been passing, the beauty of Italy rising into the grand desolation of the country that belongs to the snow-kingdom, and that again descending into the awful grandeur of rugged precipices, hissing torrents and shaggy pines, the little party was gloomy. The Pole shivered, and folding his fur-cloak around him cursed the ancestral enemies of his race; the Swiss rubbed their hands, stamped their feet and looked defiantly at a threatening storm-cloud that was rising up behind them; the German tried to get up a shadow of enthusiasm. He stared, with what was meant to be earnestness, through his spectacles, emitted a series of "wunderschöns and wunderhübschs," and strove dutifully to think that this was seeing life and entering sympathetically into Nature's most secret joys—the joy of the torrent, the delight of the snow-whirl. Perhaps it was scarcely matter for surprise that his enthusiasm left rather a dreary effect upon the minds of his companions.
Arthur was the only one who really enjoyed, for this was novelty to him, and in his fashionable life he had long been craving for something out of the common. Then, too, there was about this kind of travelling a certain necessity for endurance which braced his nerves. He was doing this for Margaret, and as each keen blast of wind, sweeping with biting force from the ice-fields, touched his young face, he felt the blood tingle in his veins. He was full of satisfaction, strong to endure.