at young MacRae knows or what he feels, but I can
guess. I'd make it worse if I meddled. Should I go to this hot-headed
young fool and say, 'Come on, let's shake hands, and you marry my
daughter'?"

"Don't be absurd," Betty flashed. "I'm not asking you to _do_ anything."

"I couldn't do anything in this case if I wanted to," Gower declared.
"As a matter of fact, I think I'd put young MacRae out of my head, if I
were you. I wouldn't pick him for a husband, anyway."

Betty rose to her feet.

"You brought me into the world," she said passionately. "You have fed me
and clothed me and educated me and humored all my whims ever since I can
remember. But you can't pick a husband for me. I shall do that for
myself. It's silly to tell me to put Jack MacRae out of my head. He
isn't in my head. He's in my--my--heart. And I can keep him there, if I
can't have him in my arms. Put him out of my head! You talk as if loving
and marrying were like dealing in fish."

"I wish it were," Gower rumbled. "I might have had some success at it
myself."

Betty did not even vouchsafe reply. Probably she did not even hear what
he said. She turned and went to the window, stood looking out at the
rising turmoil of the sea, at the lowering scud of the clouds, dabbing
surreptitiously at her eyes with a handkerchief. After a little she
walked out of the room. Her feet sounded lightly on the stairs.

Gower bent to the fire again. He resumed his aimless stirring of the
coals. A grim, twisted smile played about his lips. But his eyes were as
somber as the storm-blackened winter sky.

CHAPTER XVI

En Famille

Horace Gower's town house straddled the low crest of a narrow peninsula
which juts westward into the Gulf from the heart of the business section
of Vancouver. The tip of this peninsula ends in the green forest of
Stanley Park, which is like no other park in all North America, either
in its nature or its situation. It is a sizable stretch of ancient
forest, standing within gunshot of skyscrapers, modern hotels, great
docks where China freighters unload tea and silk. Hard on the flank of a
modern seaport this area of primitive woodland broods in the summer sun
and the winter rains not greatly different from what it must have been
in those days when only the Siwash Indians penetrated its shadowy
depths.

The rear of Gower's house abutted against the park, neighbor to great
tall firs and massive, branchy cedars and a jungle of fern and