No one answered him.  But Elizabeth looking up saw the aspect of Mariette—­the aspect of a thinker and a mystic—­slowly relax.  Its harshness became serenity, its bitterness peace.  And with her quick feeling she guessed that the lament of the Chief Justice had only awakened in the religious mind the typical religious cry, “Thou, Lord, art the Eternal, and Thy years shall not fail.”

At Field, where a most friendly inn shelters under the great shoulders of Mount Stephen, they left the car a while, took tea in the hotel, and wandered through the woods below it.  All the afternoon, Elizabeth had shown a most delicate and friendly consideration for Delaine.  She had turned the conversation often in his direction and on his subjects, had placed him by her side at tea, and in general had more than done her duty by him.  To no purpose.  Delaine saw himself as the condemned man to whom indulgences are granted before execution.  She would probably have done none of these things if there had been any real chance for him.

But in the walk after tea, Anderson and Lady Merton drifted together.  There had been so far a curious effort on both their parts to avoid each other’s company.  But now the Chief Justice and Delaine had foregathered; Philip was lounging and smoking on the balcony of the hotel with a visitor there, an old Etonian fishing and climbing in the Rockies for health, whom they had chanced upon at tea.  Mariette, after one glance at the company, especially at Elizabeth and Anderson, had turned aside into the woods by himself.

They crossed the river and strolled up the road to Emerald Lake.  Over the superb valley to their left hung the great snowy mass, glistening and sunlit, of Mount Stephen; far to the West the jagged peaks of the Van Home range shot up into the golden air; on the flat beside the river vivid patches of some crimson flower, new to Elizabeth’s eyes, caught the sloping light; and the voice of a swollen river pursued them.

They began to talk, this time of England.  Anderson asked many questions as to English politics and personalities.  And she, to please him, chattered of great people and events, of scenes and leaders in Parliament, of diplomats and royalties; all the gossip of the moment, in fact, fluttering round the principal figures of English and European politics.  It was the talk most natural to her; the talk of the world she knew best; and as Elizabeth was full of shrewdness and natural salt, without a trace of malice, no more at least than a woman should have—­to borrow the saying about Wilkes and his squint—­her chatter was generally in request, and she knew it.

But Anderson, though he had led up to it, did not apparently enjoy it; on the contrary, she felt him gradually withdrawing and cooling, becoming a little dry and caustic, even satirical, as on the first afternoon of their acquaintance.  So that after a while her gossip flagged; since the game wants two to play it.  Then Anderson walked on with a furrowed brow, and raised colour; and she could not imagine what had been done or said to annoy him.