'I guess I'm a total fraud.'

Jane Grange was twenty-one in a week's time, fair, fresh-faced, blue-eyed, everyone called her 'Baby'. Her sister Nancy was almost two years older. Both wore the 'neo-directoire' fashion, which had reached New York from Paris the previous fall. Baby had a grey scarlet-lined travelling-coat over a narrow ankle-length pink merino dress, her wide-brimmed felt hat with a panache of pink-dyed ostrich feathers. Nancy wore a green cape, a navy-blue serge jacket with tight skirt, a hat equally large with crimson muslin roses and big-dotted veil. The sisters had renounced petticoats, and Baby even wore the latest 'fish-net' stockings.

'Maybe they'll take one look at you and send you right back home to New York,' Nancy agreed.

'Then I should feel an even bigger fraud, shouldn't I? Making all that fuss, coming all this way, for absolutely nothing. How should I ever live it down?'

'It wouldn't be embarrassing at all. Everyone would be so glad to see you back.'

'Yes, I guess so,' said Baby animatedly. 'We'd have the most wonderful party in the world. Why, I can still hold my ball, can't I? It wouldn't be too late. We can use the same invitations, I never threw them away.' She looked through the window, over the coast road across the lake. Excitement flickered from her face. Both knew there was no chance of being turned away. 'Is that Mont Blanc?'

'It's Mont Salиve. They call it the cab-drivers' Mont Blanc. Tourists get bilked, taking an afternoon trip. That's so, Maria-Thйrиse?'

Mademoiselle Maria-Thйrиse Lascalle sat in a long black alpaca coat and black straw bonnet, clutching a large black handbag as though expecting to be robbed. Like many middle-aged Frenchwomen, consecutive mourning for remote relations allowed economy in dress. She had been engaged in Paris through familiarity with English and with Switzerland. Her English had become worse and her taciturnity greater during the journey, but ladies travelling without a maid could neither attract respect not keep their own. She said she knew nothing about the taxicabs.