“No, no!—­you are too good to me—­too good;—­let it end here.  It is much, much better so.”

Then she broke down a little.

She looked round her, like some hurt creature seeking a means of escape.  Her lips trembled.  She gave a low cry.  “And I have loved Canada so!  I have been so happy here.”

“And now I have hurt you?—­I have spoilt everything?”

“It is your unhappiness does that—­and that you will spoil your life.  Promise me only this one thing—­to come to England!  Promise me!”

He sat down in a quiet despair that she would urge him so.  A long argument followed between them, and at last she wore him down.  She dared say nothing more of the Commissionership; but he promised her to come to England some time in the following winter; and with that she had to be content.

Then she gave him breakfast.  During their conversation, which Elizabeth guided as far as possible to indifferent topics, the name of Mariette was mentioned.  He was still, it seemed, at Vancouver.  Elizabeth gave Anderson a sudden look, and casually, without his noticing, she possessed herself of the name of Mariette’s hotel.

At breakfast also she described, with a smile and sigh, her brother’s first and last attempt to shoot wild goat in the Rockies, an expedition which had ended in a wetting and a chill—­“luckily nothing much; but poor Philip won’t be out of his room to-day.”

“I will go and see him,” said Anderson, rising.

Elizabeth looked up, her colour fluttering.

“Mr. Anderson, Philip is only a boy, and sometimes a foolish boy—­”

“I understand,” said Anderson quietly, after a moment.  “Philip thinks his sister has been running risks.  Who warned him?”

Elizabeth shrugged her shoulders without replying.  He saw a touch of scorn in her face that was new to him.

“I think I guess,” he said.  “Why not?  It was the natural thing.  So Mr. Delaine is still here?”

“Till to-morrow.”

“I am glad.  I shall like to assure him that his name was not mentioned—­he was not involved at all!”

Elizabeth’s lip curled a little, but she said nothing.  During the preceding forty-eight hours there had been passages between herself and Delaine that she did not intend Anderson to know anything about.  In his finical repugnance to soiling his hands with matters so distasteful, Delaine had carried out the embassy which Anderson had perforce entrusted to him in such a manner as to rouse in Elizabeth a maximum of pride on her own account, and of indignation on Anderson’s.  She was not even sorry for him any more; being, of course, therein a little unjust to him, as was natural to a high-spirited and warm-hearted woman.

Anderson, meanwhile, went off to knock at Philip’s door, and Philip’s sister was left behind to wonder nervously how Philip would behave and what he would say.  She was still smarting under the boy’s furious outburst of the night before when, through a calculated indiscretion of Delaine’s, the notion that Anderson had presumed and might still presume to set his ambitions on Elizabeth had been presented to him for the first time.