The House of the Four Winds

Chapter III-1

CHAPTER III

DIVERSIONS OF A MARIONETTE

I

Miss Alison Westwater dropped with a happy sigh beside a bed of wild strawberries still wet with dew, and proceeded to make a second breakfast. It was still early morning—not quite seven o’clock—but she had been walking ever since half-past five, when she had broken her fast on a cup of coffee and a last-night’s roll provided by a friendly chambermaid. She had left the highway, which, switch-backing from valley to valley, took the traveller to Italy, and had taken a forest track which after a mile or two among pines came out on an upland meadow, and led to a ridge, the spur of a high mountain, from which the kingdoms of the earth could be surveyed. The sky was not the pale turquoise bowl which in her own country heralded a perfect summer day, but