inder if I suggested to him to go home by
California, while we come back again through the Rockies? Don't you
think it would? I feel that I have begun to get on his nerves--as he on
mine. If you were only here! But, I assure you, he doesn't _look_
miserable; and I think he will bear up very well. And if it will be any
comfort to you to be told that I know what is meant by the gnawing of
the little worm, Compunction, then be comforted, dearest; for it gnaws
horribly, and out of all proportion--I vow--to my crimes.

"Philip is better on the whole, and has taken an enormous fancy to Mr.
Anderson. But, as I have told you all along, he is not so much better as
you and I hoped he would be. I take every care of him that I can, but
you know that he is not wax, when it comes to managing. However, Mr.
Anderson has been a great help."

Recollections of this letter, and other thoughts besides, coming from
much deeper strata of the mind than she had been willing to reveal to
her mother, kept slipping at intervals through Elizabeth's
consciousness, as she sat beside the lake.

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 tra