much nobler than forest
love; but what was a man to do, and how guide his conduct when all the
world was a-mating? On occasions he had a clearer vision, and realised
with a sense of sudden shame to how low a level he had sunk. Then he
would strive to throw off this attraction for a half-breed girl by
recalling the faces of all the other women whom he had admired and
loved. Yet this also was dangerous, for it caused him to remember
Mordaunt, thoughts of whom roused up anger within him against
Spurling. He had agreed to leave him to God, and could not go back on
his word; therefore he must forget Mordaunt and, if his mind must be
haunted by womankind, think only of Peggy. Peggy! Well, she was not a
bad little sort. Pretty? Yes. But between her and himself there could
be no community of mind. He knew that for hundreds of years it had
been the custom of traders and white trappers to take to themselves a
squaw from a tribe of friendly Indians, sometimes for the sake of
commercial advantages, sometimes for defence, sometimes for domestic
convenience, rarely for love. But there his education, which would
have served him well in an older land, stood in his way, as it had so
often done, making him over-delicate.

He could find it in his heart to wish himself more ignorant and less
refined. That glamour of intellectual gentility, which England sets
such store by, had made him unfit for the outdoor brutalities of
northern life. In his catastrophe he knew that he was not single,
though there was small consolation in that; all through Canada he had
encountered younger sons, drawing-room bred young gentlemen, who
worked in lumber camps, on railroads, and in mines by day, and spelt
out their Horace from ragged texts by brushwood fires, beneath the
stars, or in verminous shacks by night. Their power to construe a dead
language served to differentiate them from their associates, and,
rather foolishly if heroically, to bolster up their pride.

But, to return to Peggy, what a pity it was that she had insisted on
the marriage ceremony! Yet, he respected her for that. _But_, and
there was always a but in Granger's reasonings, suppose he should get
his chance to return to England one day! And this would certainly
happen to him on his mother's death. And suppose, when he had
tethered himself to this half-breed wife, he should get word that
Mordaunt was still alive! Granger was always at a loss when the moment
for decision presented itself;