But luck was against them. A devastating blizzard enveloped them, and they lay huddled together behind a rock, chilled to the bone by the driving particles of ice and snow.
"There is no escape," said Lord Tamerton mournfully to his sister, Lady Margaret. "We must prepare to meet our deaths like true mountaineers."
"True fiddlesticks!" replied Lady Margaret with spirit. "Ralph will come back to us."
"Do you love him, Madge?" asked her brother.
"Yes," she replied simply.
"Then he will surely come back."
Even as he spoke a tall figure loomed out of the blizzard and raised his hat with cold formality.
"Your cousin is safe in the hospital at Interlaken," said Ralph, addressing Lord Tamerton with marked constraint. "He has merely sustained a fractured patella. With your permission we will now descend."
"What is the matter, Ralph?" cried Lady Margaret pleadingly; but, ignoring her question, he busied himself in tying on the rope.
The descent which followed is still spoken of with bated breath by the Swiss guides, than whom there is no more generous body of men in the world.