Part 46 (1/2)

She saw the man set his lips, for it seemed scarcely probable to him that a young woman who begged for the picture of a man would do so merely because she desired to possess it as a work of art. Besides, he felt, and in this he was to some extent correct, that she had intended the admission to be provocative. He was, however, a man with a simple code which forbade his making any attempt to claim this woman's love while it was possible that in a few months he might once more become a wandering outcast. He sat still for a moment or two, and it seemed to Ida, who watched him quietly, that he had worn much the same look when he stood beside the helpless Grenfell, gripping the big ax. This was really the fact, though he now entered upon a sterner struggle than he had been ready to engage in then. Once more he was endeavoring to do what it seemed to him right.

”Miss Kinnaird would have been better employed if she had painted the big snow peak with the lake at its feet,” he said at length.

Ida abandoned the attempt to move him. She had yielded to a momentary impulse, but she was too proud to persist.

”Well,” she said, ”that peak certainly was rather wonderful. You remember it?”

”Yes,” said Weston with injudicious emphasis; ”I remember everything about that camp. I can see the big black firs towering above the still water--and you were sitting where the light came slanting in between them. You wore that gray fis.h.i.+ng suit with the belt round it, and you had your hat off. The light made little gold gleams in your hair that matched the warm red glow on the redwood behind you--and you had burst the strap of one little shoe.”

”Haven't you overlooked Arabella?” suggested Ida, who realized that his memory was significantly clear.

”Miss Kinnaird?” said Weston. ”Of course, she was with you--but it's rather curious that she's quite shadowy. I don't quite seem to fix her, though I have a notion that she didn't fit in. She was out of key.”

”That,” laughed Ida, ”was probably the result of wearing a smart English skirt. Do you remember the day you fell down and broke her parasol, and what you said immediately afterward about women's fripperies?”

”I didn't know that I had an audience,” explained Weston, with his eyes twinkling. ”I certainly remember that when you fancied that I had hurt myself you would have carried half the things over the portage if I had let you. We went fis.h.i.+ng that evening. There was one big trout that broke you in the pool beneath the rapid. The scent of the firs was wonderful.”

She led him on with a few judicious questions and suggestions, and for half an hour they talked of thundering rivers, still lakes and shadowy bush. He remembered everything, and, without intending to do so, he made it clear that in every vivid memory she was the prominent figure.

It was here she had hooked a big trout, and there she had, under his directions, run a canoe down an easy rapid. She had enjoyed all that the great cities had to offer, but as she listened to him she sighed for the silence of the pine-scented bush.

At last he rose with a deprecatory smile.

”I'm afraid I've rather abused your patience,” he said; ”and I have to call on Wannop about the mine.”

”You have told me nothing about it,” said Ida. ”How is it getting on?”

A shadow crept into Weston's face.

”There isn't very much to tell, and it was a relief to get it out of my mind for an hour or so. As a matter of fact, it's by no means getting on as we should like it.”

Then, after another word or two, he took up his hat and left her.

CHAPTER XXVIII

WESTON STANDS FAST

Business called Weston to Winnipeg a few days after his interview with Ida, and, as it happened, he met Stirling at the head of the companionway when the big lake steamer steamed out into Georgian Bay.

Neither of them had any other acquaintance on board, and they sat together in the shade of a deckhouse as the steamer ploughed her way smoothly across Lake Huron a few hours later. Weston had arranged to meet a Chicago stock-jobber who had displayed some interest in the mine, and he had chosen to travel up the lakes because it was more comfortable than in the cars in the hot weather, besides being somewhat cheaper, which was a consideration with him. Stirling, it seemed, was going to inspect the route for a railroad which an iron-mining company contemplated building. He lay in a deck-chair, with a cigar in his hand, apparently looking out at the s.h.i.+ning water which stretched away before them, a vast sheet of turquoise, to the far horizon.

”Well,” he asked at length, ”how's the Grenfell Consolidated progressing?”

”It seems to be making most progress backward,” said Weston. ”Still, I suppose the fact that somebody evidently considered it worth while to send up men to jump our claim might be considered encouraging.”

He briefly related what had taken place at the mine, as far as Saunders' letter had acquainted him with the facts, and Stirling listened thoughtfully.

”It's a crude maneuver, so crude that, as you've nothing but suspicions to go upon, it would be wiser not to mention them to anybody else,” he said. ”After all, the jumpers may have been acting on their own account.”

”You believe they were?”