Delia Blanchflower

"Ah, she was good-looking?" laughed Winnington. "That, of course, gave her a most unfair advantage."

"A man's jest," said the other dryly--"and an old one. But naturally women take all the advantage they can get--out of anything. They need it. However, this young lady had plenty of other gifts--besides her beauty. She was as strong as most men. She rode, she climbed, she sang. The whole hotel did nothing but watch her. She was the centre of everything. But after a little while she insisted on leaving her father down here to over-eat himself and play cards, while she went with her maid and a black mare that nobody but she wanted to ride, up to the Jagd-hütte in the forest. There!--you can see a little blue smoke coming from it now"--

She pointed through the window to the great forest-clothed cliff, some five thousand feet high, which fronted the hotel; and across a deep valley, just below its topmost point, Mark Winnington saw a puff of s