t yet satisfied.

"You could have sent the girl on, and then have shot the fall," he
said. "It would have saved you quite a lot of trouble."

"Oh, yes," agreed Weston, who appeared to resent his curiosity.
"Still, I didn't."

Grenfell moved away, and Ida recognized now that, in spite of a good
deal of provocation, Weston had acted with laudable delicacy. It was
clear that his obduracy in the matter of taking her down the fall had
been due to a regard for her safety. He had also saddled himself with
a laborious task to prevent this fact from becoming apparent. She
fancied that, had she been in his place, she could have arranged the
thing more neatly; but, after all, that did not detract from the
delicacy of his purpose, and she sat very still, with a rather curious
expression in her face, until Grenfell came to announce that supper
was ready.

CHAPTER XV

THE ROCK POOL

Ida was quietly gracious to Weston during the week that followed his
opposition to her wishes at the portage. This was not so much because
she knew she had been wrong in insisting on his taking her down the
fall, for, after all, that matter was a trifling one, but it was more
because she was pleased by the part that he had played. The man, it
seemed, had preferred to face her anger rather than to allow her to
run any personal risk, and afterward had undertaken a very laborious
task to prevent her from discovering why he had borne it. This was as
far as she would go, though she was aware that it left something to be
explained.

In any case, there was a subtle change in her manner toward Weston.
She had never attempted to patronize him, but now she placed him
almost on the footing of an intimate acquaintance. It was done
tactfully and naturally, but Mrs. Kinnaird noticed it, and took alarm.
Why she should do so was not very clear, for Stirling certainly had
not encouraged her to put herself to any trouble on his daughter's
account, but perhaps it was because Ida was going to England, and she
had a well-favored son. It is also possible that, being a lady of
conventional ideas, she acted instinctively and could not help
herself. That a young woman of extensive possessions should encourage
a camp-packer was, from her point of view, unthinkable.

For this reason, perhaps, it was not astonishing that there was for
some little time a quiet battle between the two. When Ida desired to
go fishing, Mrs. Kinnaird suggested something else, or contriv