"
"Mademoiselle," he said, in his most impressive voice, "I envy you."
Sylvia looked up at him with a little smile of mischief upon her lips.
"And why, monsieur?"
He waved his arm magnificently.
"I watched you at dinner. You are of the elect, mademoiselle, for whom
the snow peaks have a message."
Sylvia's smile faded from her face.
"Perhaps so, monsieur," she said, gravely, and her mother
interposed testily:
"A message! Ridiculous! There are only two words in the message, my dear.
Cold-cream! and be sure you put it on your face before you go to bed."
Sylvia apparently did not hear her mother's comment. At all events she
disregarded it, and Monsieur Pettigrat once again shook his head at
Sylvia with a kindly magnificence.
"They have no message for me, mademoiselle," he said, with a sigh, as
though he for once regretted that he was so uncommon. "I once went up
there to see." He waved his hand generally to the chain of Mont Blanc and
drifted largely away.
Mrs. Thesiger, however, was to hear more definitely of that message two
days later. It was after dinner. She was sitting in the garden with her
daughter on a night of moonlight; behind them rose the wall of
mountains, silent and shadowed, in front were the lights of the little
town, and the clatter of its crowded streets. Between the town and the
mountains, at the side of the hotel this garden lay, a garden of grass
and trees, where the moonlight slept in white brilliant pools of light,
or dripped between the leaves of the branches.
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