The two great buildings which comprise the hotel were full to overflowing, as it usually is in the autumn season, a gay cosmopolitan crowd, who dined and danced and went on excursions either mountaineering or along the great blue lake to Kussnacht to see Tell’s Chapel, to Vitznau, Brunnen, or Fluelen. From the verandas there spread a wonderful panorama of lake and mountain with the various peaks, with the names of which the visitor so soon becomes familiar.
Geoffrey was standing alone on the veranda early one morning admiring the wonderful view in the morning light. There was passing along a very feeble, white-haired, white-bearded old man, accompanied by a handsome dark-haired, well-dressed young woman, who, from the attention she paid him, was palpably his daughter. The old fellow walked decrepitly as one of advanced age, and ever and anon he halted to take in the wondrous scene.
As they passed by they spoke in a tongue with which Geoffrey was unfamiliar. But the young woman, he saw, wore a wedding ring.
Their eyes met, and in hers he noted a strange, appealing look—an expression which, being quite unusual, caused him to ponder. He was rapidly becoming a cosmopolitan after his various missions abroad on behalf of the Marconi Company.
All that day he spent in the wireless hut high upon the bare, rocky mountain, carefully fitting the instruments which were to give such a wide range of telegraphy and speech—the very latest devices that had been invented in the research department at Chelmsford, for, after all, the real brains of wireless are centred in that old-fashioned Essex town.
That night he was back with Lane at the big hotel, and dined in the great salle à manger, amid the gay laughter and chatter.
Across in a corner sat the white-bearded old man with his married daughter. He seemed rather deaf, for ever and anon she bent to speak with him. And as she did so, he saw that she was most solicitous of his welfare, as only a daughter could be.
Later that night, there being the usual dance in the big ballroom, Geoffrey went in, and being attracted by her, invited her to dance with him, and she accepted.
She was alone. The old man had retired to bed.
Geoffrey’s interest was purely one of curiosity. The girl-wife seemed to be carrying out her duty to her father, and was terribly bored in doing so.