do it, Duncan--if--"

Her voice had dropped. I bent my ear.

"If only," she sighed, "I had a friend who would!"

Catherine was still looking down when I looked up; but the droop of the
slender body, the humble angle of the cavalier hat, the faint flush
underneath, all formed together a challenge and an appeal which were the
more irresistible for their sweet shamefacedness. Acute consciousness of
the past (I thought), and (I even fancied) some penitence for a wrong by
no means past undoing, were in every sensitive inch of her, as she sat a
suppliant to the old player of that part. And there are emotions of
which the body may be yet more eloquent than the face; there was the
figure of Watts's "Hope" drooping over as she drooped, not more lissom
and speaking than her own; just then it caught my eye, and on the spot
it was as though the lute's last string of that sweet masterpiece had
vibrated aloud in Catherine's room.

My hand shook as I reached for my trusty sticks, but I cannot say that
my voice betrayed me when I inquired the name of the Swiss hotel.

"The Riffel Alp," said Catherine--"above Zermatt, you know."

"I start to-morrow morning," I rejoined, "if that will do."

Then Catherine looked up. I cannot describe her look. Transfiguration
were the idle word, but the inadequate, and yet more than one would
scatter the effect of so sudden a burst of human sunlight.