Another five minutes brought them to the top of a little plateau set in between two ranges of mountains, and dividing two lakes, famous the world over. Even after the couple reached their destination, however, they stood silent for a minute. Then Frances exclaimed,—
“Isn’t it glorious?”
“Lovely,” assented Champney, emphatically, but staring all the time at Frances, making it doubtful of what he was speaking.
Frances, being quite conscious of this gaze, looked all the harder at the view. “The mountains shut in so grandly!” she remarked, after a pause.
“Such perfect solitude!” said Champney, enthusiastically.
“Yes,” assented Frances, with apparent reluctance in admitting the fact. “But I suppose we must be going down again; mama will be lonely.”
Champney calmly seated himself on a stone, unstrung his field-glass, and surveyed through it the edge of the lake, far below them. “Your mother,” he announced, “is sitting on the rug, just where we left her. Her back is against the tree, and she is pretending to read. But she’s doing nothing of the kind. She is taking a nap on the sly. Surely you don’t want to disturb her?”
“It must be nearly luncheon time.”
“The boatmen haven’t even begun to unpack yet. Johann is just taking the Vöslauer out of the boat, to cool it in the lake. They won’t be ready for half an hour.”
Frances began to look a little worried. There was a dangerous persistence in this evident desire to remain on the alp. “I think I’ll go down, anyway,” she said.