He rose at once to join her. "Why, how quick you have been! Or else the
time flies here. Eustace is still skating. I had no idea he was so
accomplished. See, there he is!"
But Isabel set her haggard face towards the mountain-road that wound up
beyond the hotel. "I am going to look for Basil," she said.
"It is waste of time," said Scott quietly.
But he did not attempt to withstand her. They turned side by side up the
hard, snowy track.
For some time they walked in silence. At a short distance from the hotel,
the road ascended steeply through a pine-wood, dark and mysterious as an
enchanted forest, through which there rose the sound of a rushing stream.
Scott paused to listen, but instantly his sister laid an imperious hand
upon him.
"I can't wait," she said. "I am sure he is just round the corner. I heard
him whistle."
He moved on in response to her insistence. "I heard that whistle too," he
said. "But it was a mountain-boy."
He was right. At a curve in the road, they met a young Swiss lad who went
by them with a smile and salute, and fell to whistling again when he had
passed.
Isabel pressed on in silence. She had started in feverish haste, but her
speed was gradually slackening. She looked neither to right nor left; her
eyes perpetually strained forward as though they sought for something
just beyond their range of vision. For a while Scott limped beside her
without speaking, but at last as they sighted the end of the pine-wood he
gently broke the silence.
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