Next day they went to the Buergenstock to stay. It was all arranged with
consummate simplicity. Paul was to start for a climb, he told his valet,
and for a week they would leave Lucerne. Mme. Zalenska was not very well,
it appeared, and consented to try, at the suggestion of the amiable
manager--inspired by Dmitry--a few days in higher air. There would not be
a soul in their hotel on top of the Buergenstock probably, and she could
have complete rest.

They did not arrive together, Paul was the first. He had not seen her.
Dmitry had given him his final instructions, and he awaited her coming
with passionate impatience.

He had written to her, on awaking, a coherent torrent of love,
marvellously unlike the letter which had gone to poor Isabella only a few
days before. In this to his lady he had said he could not bear it _now_,
the uncertainty of seeing her, and had suggested the Buergenstock crudely,
without any of the clever details which afterwards made it possible.

He--Paul Verdayne, not quite twenty-three years old, and English--to
suggest without a backward thought or a qualm that a lady whom he had
known five days should come and live with him and be his love! None of his
friends accustomed to his bashful habits would have believed it. Only his
father perhaps might have smiled.

As for the Lady Henrietta, she would have fainted on the spot. But fortune
favoured him--they did not know.

No excitement of the wildest day's hunting had ever made his pulses bound