“Your ways are not mine—­your ideals are not mine, God forbid they should be!”—­he seemed to be constantly saying.  “But we happen to be oxen bound under the same yoke, and dragging the same plough.  No gush, please—­but at the same time no ill-will!  Loyal?—­to your loyalties?  Oh yes—­quite sufficiently—­so long as you don’t ask us to let it interfere with our loyalty to our own!  Don’t be such fools as to expect us to take much interest in your Imperial orgies.  But we’re all right!  Only let us alone—­we’re all right!”

Such seemed to be the voice of this queer, kindly, satiric personality.  London generally falls into the arms of those who flout her; and Mariette, with his militant Catholicism, and his contempt for our governing ideals, became the fashion.  As for Anderson, the contact with English Ministers and men of affairs had but carried on the generous process of development that Nature had designed for a strong man.  Whereas in Mariette the vigorous, self-confident English world—­based on the Protestant idea—­produced a bitter and profound irritation, Anderson seemed to find in that world something ripening and favouring that brought out all the powers—­the intellectual powers at least—­of his nature.  He did his work admirably; left the impression of a “coming man” on a great many leading persons interested in the relations between England and Canada; and when as often happened Elizabeth and he found themselves at the same dinner-table, she would watch the changes in him that a larger experience was bringing about, with a heart half proud, half miserable.  As for his story, which was very commonly known, in general society, it only added to his attractions.  Mothers who were under no anxieties lest he might want to marry their daughters, murmured the facts of his unlucky provenance to each other, and then the more eagerly asked him to dinner.

Meanwhile, for Elizabeth life was one long debate, which left her often at night exhausted and spiritless.  The shock of their first meeting at Martindale, when all her pent-up yearning and vague expectation had been met and crushed by the silent force of the man’s unaltered will, had passed away.  She understood him better.  The woman who is beloved penetrates to the fact through all the disguises that a lover may attempt.  Elizabeth knew well that Anderson had tones and expressions for her that no other woman could win from him; and looking back to their conversation at the Glacier House, she realised, night after night, in the silence of wakeful hours, the fulness of his confession, together with the strength of his recoil from any pretension to marry her.

Yes, he loved her, and his mere anxiety—­now, and as things stood—­to avoid any extension or even repetition of their short-lived intimacy, only betrayed the fact the more eloquently.  Moreover, he had reason, good reason, to think, as she often passionately reminded herself, that he had touched her heart, and that had the course been clear, he might have won her.