Yet still no word of feeling, of intimacy even.  Her soul cried out within her, but there was no answer.  Then, when it was time to dress, and she led him through the hall, to the inlaid staircase with its famous balustrading—­early English ironwork of extraordinary delicacy—­and through the endless corridors upstairs, old and dim, but crowded with portraits and fine furniture, Anderson looked round him in amazement.

“What a wonderful place!”

“It is too old!” cried Elizabeth, petulantly; then with a touch of repentance—­“Yet of course we love it.  We are not so stifled here as you would be.”

He smiled and did not reply.

“Confess you have been stifled—­ever since you came to England.”

He drew a long breath, throwing back his head with a gesture which made Elizabeth smile.  He smiled in return.

“It was you who warned me how small it would all seem.  Such little fields—­such little rivers—­such tiny journeys!  And these immense towns treading on each other’s heels.  Don’t you feel crowded up?”

“You are home-sick already?”

He laughed—­“No, no!” But the gleam in his eyes admitted it.  And Elizabeth’s heart sank—­down and down.

* * * * *

A few more guests arrived for Sunday—­a couple of politicians, a journalist, a poet, one or two agreeable women, a young Lord S., who had just succeeded to one of the oldest of English marquisates, and so on.

Elizabeth had chosen the party to give Anderson pleasure, and as a guest he did not disappoint her pride in him.  He talked well and modestly, and the feeling towards Canada and the Canadians in English society had been of late years so friendly that although there was often colossal ignorance, there was no coolness in the atmosphere about him.  Lord S. confused Lake Superior with Lake Ontario, and was of opinion that the Mackenzie River flowed into the Ottawa.  But he was kind enough to say that he would far sooner go to Canada than any of “those beastly places abroad”—­and as he was just a simple handsome youth, Anderson took to him, as he had taken to Philip at Lake Louise, and by the afternoon of Sunday was talking sport and big game in a manner to hold the smoking-room enthralled.

Only unfortunately Philip was not there to hear.  He had been over-tired by the shoot, and had caught a chill beside.  The doctor was in the house, and Mrs. Gaddesden had very little mind to give to her Sunday party.  Elizabeth felt a thrill of something like comfort as she noticed how in the course of the day Anderson unconsciously slipped back into the old Canadian position; sitting with Philip, amusing him and “chaffing” him; inducing him to obey his doctor; cheering his mother, and in general producing in Martindale itself the same impression of masculine help and support which he had produced on Elizabeth, five months before, in a Canadian hotel.