see the colour that crept into her face, for his
perceptions were not clear then; but he rose with an effort, and
together they went back to the house through the snow. There Nasmyth
changed his clothes for the dry garments he had brought in a valise
strapped to the pack-saddle, and an hour after supper he fell quietly
asleep in his chair. Then Laura turned to her father.

"You let him walk all the way when he is worn-out and hurt!" she said
accusingly.

Waynefleet waved his hand. "He insisted on it; and I would like to
point out that there is nothing very much the matter with him. We have
all been working very hard at the canyon; in fact, I quite fail to
understand why you should be so much more concerned about him than you
evidently are about me. I am, however, quite aware that there would be
no use in my showing that I resented it."

Laura said nothing further. She felt that silence was wiser, for,
after all, her patience now and then almost failed her.

CHAPTER XXIV

REALITIES

Though there was bitter frost in the ranges, it had but lightly
touched the sheltered forests that shut in Bonavista. The snow seldom
lay long there, and only a few wisps of it gleamed beneath the
northern edge of the pines. Mrs. Acton, as usual, had gathered a
number of guests about her, and Violet Hamilton sat talking with one
of them in the great drawing-room one evening. The room was
brilliantly lighted, and the soft radiance gleamed upon the polished
parquetry floor, on which rugs of costly skins were scattered. A fire
of snapping pine-logs blazed in the big English hearth, and a faint
aromatic fragrance crept into the room.

Miss Hamilton leaned back in a softly padded lounge that was obviously
only made for two, and a pleasant-faced, brown-eyed young Englishman,
who had no particular business in that country, but had gone there
merely for amusement, sat at the other end of it, regarding her with a
smile.

"After all," he said reflectively, "I really don't think I'm very
sorry the snow drove us down from our shooting camp in the ranges."

Violet laughed. She had met the man before he went into the mountains,
and he had been at Bonavista for a week or two now.

"It was too cold for you up there?" she queried.

"It was," answered the man, "at least, it was certainly too cold for
Jardine, who came out with me. He got one of his feet nipped sitting
out one night with the rifle on a high ledge in the snow, and when I