The bright face, where so much youthful beauty smiled, became, as it were, veiled by a very light cloud, which disappeared at once.
"Not yet," the girl replied.
"However, you could tie yourself?" asked the mother.
"Perhaps I could," replied the girl thoughtfully.
"Don't do it without warning me, Mabel, my dear."
"Of course I will not do so without warning you," said the daughter.
Again the rosy face beneath the large white coif, beneath the rebellious chestnut hair, bent to kiss the maternal cheek. Annie Clarke contented herself with giving a little tap of the hand on her daughter's shoulder, as an apology for a caress, and followed her with her eyes as she withdrew.
CHAPTER VI
In the Catholic church of St. Moritz Bad the first Mass on a Sunday is said at six. The bell of the rather lofty tower sounded the call to the faithful once only, and feebly, as if a discreet hand measured the sound at that early morning hour. The valley was full of a fleeting white mist that concealed the mountains far and near, that billowed over the large, deserted meadows near the church, rendering their grass soft with water and glistening with flowers; it billowed amidst the large hotels, closed and silent, and in the deserted and silent streets of the Bad. The sun, which much later would cause the white morning mist of the Engadine to vanish, had not yet emerged from behind the quaint Piz Languard. The cold was keen and the atmosphere of an equal shade, greyish white and very soft.