Now, on this Sunday afternoon, as the train made its sure-footed way across the mountains, the thought that he was actually to alight at Montreux at once fascinated and depressed him. He was annoyed with himself for suffering it to get such a hold upon his mind. What was there in it, anyway? There was a big hotel there, and he and his youngsters were to stop at it, and if he accidentally encountered a certain lady who was also stopping there--and of course the meeting would bear upon its face the stamp of pure chance--what of it?
And if he did meet her, thus fortuitously--what would happen then? No doubt a lady of her social position met abroad great numbers of people that she had met at home. It would not in any way surprise her--this chance encounter of which he thought so much. Were there sufficient grounds for imagining that it would even interest her? He forced his mind up to this question, as it were, many times, and invariably it shied and evaded the leap.
There had been times, at Hadlow House, when Lady Cressage had seemed supremely indifferent to the fact of his existence, and there had been other times when it had appeared manifest that he pleased her--or better, perhaps, that she was willing to take note of how much she pleased him. It must have been apparent to her--this fact that she produced such an impression upon him. He reasoned this out satisfactorily to himself. These beautiful women, trained from childhood for the conquest of a rich husband, must have cultivated an extraordinary delicacy of consciousness, in such matters. They must have developed for themselves what might be called a sixth sense--a power of feeling in the air what the men about were thinking of them. More than once he had caught a glimmer of what he felt to be the operation of this sense, in the company of Lady Cressage. He could not say that it had been discernible in her glance, or her voice, or her manner, precisely, but he was sure that he had seen it, somehow.
But even assuming all this--admitting that in October, on a wet Sunday, in the tedium of a small country-house party, she had shown some momentary satisfaction in the idea that he was profoundly impressed by her--did it at all follow that in February, amid the distractions of a fashionable winter-resort, and probably surrounded by hosts of friends, she would pay any attention to him whatever? The abject fear that she might not even remember him--might not know him from Adam when he stood before her--skulked about in the labyrinths of his mind, but he drove it back whenever it showed itself. That would be too ignominious.