‘We’ll soon be there.’

‘Soon! An hour almost.’

‘You can stop at Chamby,’ Lionel said, ‘if you wish. Breakfast at the hotel there, and take the train up when one comes.’

‘Perhaps we will do that. Vicky too. You can go on alone.’

Victoria smiled. ‘That would be too hard, I think.’

As it happened, none of them got out at Chamby; the question was not raised again. Snow was rutted on the road and deep all round, thick on the roofs of the few small buildings and the vast hotel that stood above them. The grey lowering sky made the scene untempting and the railway track ran empty and desolate and snow-drifted through the trees. The cab rolled on silently apart from the cries of the driver, urging the horse when its hoofs slipped on patches of ice. Lionel looked at his wife with affection. He remembered what his father had said, seeing her for the first time: ‘An elegant woman. Pretty too, but elegance wears better. And a wife has to last you.’