The Golden Peaks by Eleanor Farnes Page A

don’t you worry about Anneliese? ”
    “Anneliese is Swiss, like St. Pierre. They understand each other. Also, I happen to know that Anneliese is expected to marry a young man in Zurich. That is a protection for Anneliese. When she goes off to the Mirabella, nobody thinks anything of it.”
    “Do you m e an that they thought something of it when I w ent?”
    “No, don’t misunderstand me. Everybody knows that Anneliese was too busy. But I worried about you, Celia. ”
    She smiled at him with the bewitching smile that had taken his breath away the first time he met her.
    “Then you mustn’t, Geoffrey. I do appreciate it that you should even think about me. Mr. St. Pierre scarcely notices me, and at the Mirabella he made me work hard, and behaved very well. He always behaves well—almost, one might say, indifferently.”
    He still looked anxious. She put a hand on his arm, and at once, his hand closed over it.
    “All right,” he said, “we’ll let it go. Only remember, Celia, that—as I said before—St. Pierre is no angel. I shouldn’t say this, I daresay, but he has a certain reputation. And now you’ll go away thinking that I’m a meddling busybody, and you’ll think less of me, for it . ”
    “I shall not, Geoffrey. I feel delighted to know that I have such a staunch friend out here.”
    “Then, Celia, if you really thin k of me as your friend, let me take you out sometimes, will you? I'd be delighted. For old times’ sake, if for nothing else. Will you?”
    She looked at him with a teasing smile.
    “ Then ,” she said, “I should probably have somebody warning me against you, and worrying because I was with you so often. You see, Geoffrey, there isn’t any difference. But I will come—I would like to—and I feel we really are friends after this afternoon.”
    They walked down to the hotel together, and came into the courtyard. They paused for a moment by the fountain, and Celia put her hand under the waterspout laughing as the force of the water splashed it in all directions, and drank from her hand. Anneliese was talking to Kurt at the window of the office, and they both saw the small in cident. Geoffrey reminded her once more that she had said she would go out to dinner with him; she laughingly consented again. Then they went their separate ways into the hotel.
    Kurt frowned.
    “Celia does not seem to understand the attitude she should adopt to the guests,” he said.
    Anneliese knew very well that Geoffrey Crindle was a friend of her family, but she chose to say nothing in Celia’s defence. Kurt said, turning away from the window:
    “I shall have to get Johanna to speak to her.”
    Anneliese’s lips curved in a satisfied smile.

 
    CHAPTER FIVE
    The hotel Rotihorn filled up for Easter, and with each fresh batch of arrivals excitement and holiday feeling mounted higher. The lounges were always occupied now, and often full, and sometimes Celia had to thread a way through the many people who gathered chatting in the large hall. The courtyard before the hotel held gleaming cars, utilitarian cars, little battered cars. The wrought iron garden seats and chairs, newly painted white, with red and white striped cushions in them, stood in inviting groups at scattered points in the garden, and round the courtyard. The spring flowers were at their loveliest, and the Rotihorn sported masses of them.
    The tempo of work for the staff gr ew faster and faster. Only now did Celia realize how leisurely they had been working before, and she was grateful that she had had time to become accustomed to her new job, before having to plunge into the race it had now become. There was extra help at luncheon and dinner with the waiting. Three women from chalets dotted on the mountainside, came in before the meal and left again afterwards. They were respectable, comfortably-off married women, but, after the fashion of the thrifty Swiss, they saw no reason why they should not supplement their incomes by occasional