"Of course you did. You haven't yet taken in the full enormity of Cornelia's importance. You can't do it until you see her surrounded by her own proper atmosphere—with her foot on her native heath, so to speak. Then you'll understand the massive condescension of to-night."
"I think I would just as lief not understand it," laughed Hollister, with his characteristic play of gentle humor. "It doesn't repay you to climb these very big mountains. Everybody says that there's very little to see after you've got to the tops of them."
Mrs. Diggs echoed his laugh. She was looking at Claire, however, with her bright, black, restless eyes. "I think your wife may want to climb," she said. "I'll be her guide, if she'll let me. There's a very good view from the summit of cousin Cornelia. You can look down on a lot of smaller peaks."
Claire shook her head. She had got her natural color again, but not her natural manner; she spoke in a tone of preoccupied seriousness that did not harmonize with her light words.
"I shouldn't like to fall down one of her glaciers and be lost," she said.
"Oh, there's no fear of that," cried Mrs. Diggs. "You're too sure-footed."
Somewhat later that evening, when they were alone together, Hollister asked his wife:
"Did that Mrs. Van Horn say anything that hurt you, Claire?"
"Oh, no. What made you think so, Herbert?"
"I.... Well, perhaps I only fancied it.... You had known her brother, hadn't you?"