Part 14 (1/2)

A step beside her startled her, and she looked up to see Delaine approaching.

”Out already, Mr. Arthur! But _I_ have had breakfast!”

”So have I. What a place!”

Elizabeth did not answer, but her smiling eyes swept the glorious circle of the lake.

”How soon will it all be spoilt and vulgarised?” said Delaine, with a shrug. ”Next year, I suppose, a funicular, to the top of the glacier.”

Elizabeth cried out.

”Why not?” he asked her, as he rather coolly and deliberately took his seat beside her. ”You applaud telephones on the prairies; why not funiculars here?”

”The one serves, the other spoils,” said Elizabeth eagerly.

”Serves whom? Spoils what?” The voice was cold. ”All travellers are not like yourself.”

”I am not afraid. The Canadians will guard their heritage.”

”How dull England will seem to you when you go back to it!” he said to her, after a moment. His tone had an under-note of bitterness which Elizabeth uncomfortably recognised.

”Oh! I have a way of liking what I must like,” she said, hurriedly.

”Just now, certainly, I am in love with deserts--flat or mountainous--tempered by a private car.”

He laughed perfunctorily. And suddenly it seemed to her that he had come out to seek her with a purpose, and that a critical moment might be approaching. Her cheeks flushed, and to hide them she leant over the water's edge and began to trail her finger in its clear wave.

He, however, sat in hesitation, looking at her, the prey of thoughts to which she had no clue. He could not make up his mind, though he had just spent an almost sleepless night on the attempt to do it.

The silence became embarra.s.sing. Then, if he still groped, she seemed to see her way, and took it.

”It was very good of you to come out and join our wanderings,” she said suddenly. Her voice was clear and kind. He started.

”You know I could ask for nothing better,” was his slow reply, not without dignity. ”It has been an immense privilege to see you like this, day by day.”

Elizabeth's pulse quickened.

”How can I manage it?” she desperately thought. ”But I must--”

”That's very sweet of you,” she said aloud, ”when I have bored you so with my raptures. And now it's coming to an end, like all nice things.

Philip and I think of staying a little in Vancouver. And the Governor has asked us to go over to Victoria for a few days. You, I suppose, will be doing the proper round, and going back by Seattle and San Francisco?”

Delaine received the blow--and understood it. There had been no definite plans ahead. Tacitly, it had been a.s.sumed, he thought, that he was to return with them to Montreal and England. This gentle question, then, was Elizabeth's way of telling him that his hopes were vain and his journey fruitless.

He had not often been crossed in his life, and a flood of resentment surged up in a very perplexed mind.

”Thank you. Yes--I shall go home by San Francisco.”

The touch of haughtiness in his manner, the manner of one accustomed all his life to be a prominent and considered person in the world, did not disguise from Elizabeth the soreness underneath. It was hard to hurt her old friend. But she could only sit as though she felt nothing--meant nothing--of any importance.

And she achieved it to perfection. Delaine, through all his tumult of feeling, was sharply conscious of her grace, her reticence, her soft dignity. They were exactly what he coveted in a wife--what he hoped he had captured in Elizabeth. How was it they had been s.n.a.t.c.hed from him?