Chapter V

THE two ladies who, in advance of the Swiss
season, had been warned that their design
was unconsidered, that the passes would not be
clear, nor the air mild, nor the inns open the two
ladies who, characteristically, had braved a good
deal of possibly interested remonstrance were find
ing themselves, as their adventure turned out, won
derfully sustained. It was the judgment of the
head-waiters and other functionaries on the Italian
lakes that approved itself now as interested; they
themselves had been conscious of impatiences, of
bolder dreams at least the younger had; so that
one of the things they made out together making
out as they did an endless variety was that in
those operatic palaces of the Villa d Este, of Ca-
denabbia, of Pailanza and Stresa, lone women, how
ever reinforced by a travelling-library of instruc
tive volumes, were apt to be beguiled and undone.
Their flights of fancy moreover had been modest;
they had for instance risked nothing vital in hop
ing to make their way by the Brunig. They were
making it in fact happily enough as we meet them,
and were only wishing that, for the wondrous

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v?