“This line grows worse each year,” she remarked, by way of a conversational opening. “It is horrid traveling alone. Unfortunately, I missed my son at Lucerne. Are your people on the train?”

“No. I too am alone.”

“Ah! Going to St. Moritz?”

“Yes; but I take the diligence there for Maloja.”

“The diligence! Who in the world advised that? Nobody ever travels that way.”

By “nobody,” she clearly conveyed the idea that she mixed in the sacred circle of “somebodies,” carriage folk to the soles of their boots, because Helen’s [Pg 68]guidebook showed that a diligence ran twice daily through the Upper Engadine, and the Swiss authorities would not provide those capacious four-horsed vehicles unless there were passengers to fill them.

“Oh!” cried Helen. “Should I have ordered a carriage beforehand?”

“Most decidedly. But your friends will send one. They know you are coming by this train?”

Helen smiled. She anticipated a certain amount of cross examination at the hands of residents in the hotel; but she saw no reason why the ordeal should begin so soon.

“I must take my luck then,” she said. “There ought to be plenty of carriages at St. Moritz.”

Without being positively rude, her new acquaintance could not repeat the question thus shirked. But she had other shafts in her quiver.

“You will stay at the Kursaal, of course?” she said.

“Yes.”

“A passing visit, or for a period? I ask because I am going there myself.̶