But the "little widow" shook her head sadly.
"No," she said, "I think not—my life is too full of ghosts. I would not add to the number."
And that was the end of it, for the drivers whipped up their horses at the moment, and with a jangling of bells and guttural cries from the men, they emerged from the wood, and the Palace Hotel was before them. Here Dr. Orange and a few others were gathered, waiting the bell for luncheon. They greeted such of the new-comers as were known to them with an exuberant welcome; nor did they fail to bestow their interest upon the "little widow."
"A devilish dainty little woman," said that condescending young gentleman, Keith Rivers.
Dr. Orange, however, a slim, good-looking man of forty, had become suddenly preoccupied.
"By Jove!" he said, "I know that face almost as well as my own. Now where—?"
CHAPTER II
A DARK HORSE GOES DOWN
The morning of the following day surpassed the expectation even of those who wrote the story of Andana for the English newspapers. People who were out of the hotel by nine o'clock returned to tell their friends that the sun was broiling. Others went to the little bazaar for blue glasses at one franc fifty.
There had been mist in the Rhone valley at dawn and wisps of it still hung about the entrance to the Simplon. Weather prophets detected a good omen here, and stood before the porch of the hotel to peer down into that unsurpassable ravine and to say that the cluster of black dots immediately below them stood for the church and streets of Sierre. To the right and left were the great clefts of the mighty chasm, a vast pit digged by the waters that flowed before man was, and were now sown with towns and villages and the iron links of civilisation.