Do you know Switzerland?--you who read. Do you know it at the
beginning of May? A feast of blue lakes, and snow-peaks, and the
divinest green of young beeches, and the sombre shadow of dark firs,
and the exhilaration of the air.

If you do, I need not tell you about it. Only in any case now, you
must see it through the eyes of Paul. That is if you intend to read
another page of this bad book.

It was pouring with rain when he drove from the station to the
hotel. His temper was at its worst. Pilatus hid his head in mist, the
Buergenstock was invisible--it was chilly, too, and the fire smoked in
the sitting-room when Paul had it lighted.

His heart yearned for his own snug room at Verdayne Place, and the
jolly voice of Isabella Waring counting point, quint and quatorze.
What nonsense to send him abroad. As if such treatment could be
effectual as a cure for a love like his. He almost laughed at his
mother's folly. How he longed to sit down and write to his
darling. Write and tell how he hated it all, and was only getting
through the time until he saw her six feet of buxom charms again--only
Paul did not put it like that--indeed, he never thought about her
charms at all--or want of them. He analysed nothing. He was sound
asleep, you see, to _nuances_ as yet; he was just a splendid
English young animal of the best class.

He had promised not to write to Isabella--or, if he _must_, at
least not to write a love-letter.

"Dear boy," the Lady Henrietta had said when giving him her fond