The wide piazzas surrounding the hotel and overlooking a craggy precipice and a vast expanse of mountain landscape seemed spacious, rather than deserted. A group of ladies, mostly elderly, handsomely gowned, though accoutred with little knitted shawls, and here and there a "fascinator," against the chill, rare air of the evening, sat in rocking-chairs, surveyed the majestic prospect, and talked of many things, contentedly awaiting the white frost which should set them free and fleeing from the mountains. Many doors, already illumined with lamplight, stood open, casting great parallelograms of golden radiance on the shadowy floor without. No sign of the habitation of man, not a spark betokening a lamp-lit window or a glowing hearth, showed in all the stretches of wooded ranges, with dark and sombre valleys between, barely distinguishable now, with a river here, and a silent presence of mist there, and a sense of awful solemnity and infinite loneliness brooding over all. Perhaps the impressive and austere aspect of nature without rendered the fire of hickory logs, burning on the broad hearth of the large office, of so genial and friendly a suggestion. Before it a number of great rocking-chairs stood ranged in a semicircle, and here, too, sat guests, much at their ease. It was a coign of vantage from which one could observe all that went on in the great deserted hotel—the clerk at the desk was on the remote side of the spacious apartment and the fireside group need not be hampered by the very inconsiderable business that he was called upon to transact in these dull days, out of season. But the main staircase, a large pretentious structure of double flights, was in full view, and everyone coming and going paused for a word. The two intersecting hallways met in the office; the great bay-window, formed by the ground floor of the tower, was contrived at one corner of this apartment, and, overlooking the finest prospect to be seen for many a mile, was always occupied—by loiterers at gaze in the mornings with some trifling work of crochet or battenberg, and by a table of bridge at night. A pleasant place, a peaceful haven—and Jardine looked unwontedly benign and condescending as he received his key at the counter from the clerk, and responded affably to that functionary's "Glad to see you back, Mr. Jardine."
The hotel at New Helvetia had an effect of palatial dimensions in its wide, unpeopled, vacant expanses in the shrunken state of its patronage. The immense logs, flying long, broad pennants of red and yellow flames, and supported by glittering old-fashioned brass andirons, sent a rich illumination far down the spaces of the big dining-room. The glossy hard-wood floor glistening in the sheen gave a suggestion of expense quite spurious, for there was little other timber available in the building of New Helvetia. A few round tables were set near the genial glow and the high white-painted mantelpiece. The other tables had been removed, and there was a most comfortable sense of absolute monarchical possession in having such vast apartments at one's own disposal. There was a pervasive atmosphere of privacy, of seclusion. The place was difficult of access, and the usual touring population had never found it out. Year after year the same high-grade patrons came and went; their fathers, and in some instances their grand-fathers, in days agone, had likewise flitted to and fro, and drank the waters, and danced in the ballroom, and flirted on the piazzas, and played at the lawn sports and the games of cards fashionable in their time. There were white-haired couples in the dining-room this evening who had turned each other's heads, blonde or auburn then, on the moon-lit verandah there, or beside the spring of magic beneficence, or strolling beneath the trees of the grove that could have shown many rings of added girth and many feet of lengthened growth since those enchanted hours.
It was a decorous, pleasant scene, almost home-like, yet with an agreeable community geniality and informality, as now and again groups at table exchanged comments with other groups half across the room. It might well have been a shock to Mr. Jardine strolling in to tea, freshly attired, thankful to be once more in his accustomed niche, surrounded by "nobility, and tranquillity, burgomasters, and great one-yers," even if the sight had involved no other associations, to perceive at one of the tables, sitting in this bland glamour of firelight and mellow lamplight, and the radiance of the moon which poured in through one of the long uncurtained windows, the two strangers, erst his fellow-travellers, whom he fancied he had quitted forever in the ascent of the mountain. Both were freshly groomed, quiet, and gentlemanly of demeanour, sustaining without show of consciousness the covert observation of the other occupants of the room, who were all mutually acquainted, even to the earliest sprout and the latest twig of their respective family trees. It was naturally a point of speculation what could have brought these two strangers, thus out of season, to the remote resort of the New Helvetia Springs.
One glance at Lloyd's face and Jardine's keen perceptions were satisfied that he had experienced some great excitement, some nervous shock, an agitation from which he had hardly yet recovered. His companion's aspect was unchanged, placid, powerful, but otherwise null of facial expression.
Jardine hesitated, his hand still on the knob of the door. The head waiter had briskly crossed the shining floor, with a flourish drew out Jardine's accustomed chair at a table near the fire, and stood blandly awaiting his patron. Jardine hardly heeded. He was formulating in his mind such an explanation of his suspicions as it might be consistent with prudence to detail to young Laniston—a warning, lest he continue even for an evening, an hour, this derogatory association—or would it not be better to remonstrate plainly with the officer on the indecorum of his course in bringing such an association upon respectable, unsuspicious people?
The choice did not long remain possible to him. A side door opened suddenly and Frank Laniston, fresh, roseate, all handsomely bedight, for he was of the type that loves and beseems fine clothes, entered with an elastic step, and a gay greeting as he passed the table of the strangers.
"Got here, eh—all in one piece, I see—lost you on the road," and then he took his seat at his own table, bowing and smiling rosily to the greetings he encountered, and, with a half audible sigh of pleasant anticipation, he unfolded his napkin.
"Fi-i-ne." He exclaimed presently, in the interval, while his order was filled, replying to an inquiry from across the fireplace as to the outing to Colbury.
Jardine, once again coerced by circumstances, could only traverse the room to his waiting chair, and respond with his usual sedate and appropriate urbanity to the questions as to his enjoyment of the excursion. He kept a furtive, but stern, eye on the strangers, with little result, save that he observed that the portly man ate a somewhat elaborate and well-selected meal almost in absolute silence, giving his whole attention to the matter in hand. Lloyd, on the contrary, ate little, and was as silent. He seemed distrait, perturbed, preoccupied; now gazing drearily into the flashing flames, and once, for a long interval, with lifted face watching the beams from the unseen moon, falling through the window, the rays all differentiated like the fibres of a glittering skein, the more distinct because of the background of the dark foliage of a great oak without.
When a sudden alert attentiveness usurped this apathy of reverie, Jardine, too, looked up sharply. Lucia Laniston was entering the room. The unique character of her beautiful face, the poetic, indescribable charm of her eyes, the high intelligence and nobility of sentiment that her presence expressed, despite her extreme youth, all seemed curiously independent of fashion and superior to its behests. She might have been appropriately garbed in some severely simple and classic design, apart from the modiste's creation, exclusively her own. But naught was further from her desire—naught could more definitely accord with the prevailing mode than the costumes she affected. As she came forward the long, straight folds of her chiffon gown, worn over a shining silk of the same tint, accented her height and her slenderness; the gauzy material was of a sage green, embroidered here and there with a pattern of a Persian design in terra-cotta, and darker green and a thread of gold; it had sleeves to the elbow, but was cut low and square over a beautifully modelled, but somewhat thin, neck, and, in what she called "the region of the bones," was a delicate little necklace of five emeralds placed at intervals on an almost invisible chain whereon glimmered here and there a very small and very white diamond. Her soft light-brown hair was dressed high in fluffy puffs, and as she paused, waiting a moment and glancing over her shoulder, her cousin Ruth came in, her dress duplicating this costume in lilac.