Could anyone have shown himself more helpless, useless, incompetent, than Arthur Delaine since the accident?  Yet he was still on the spot.  She realised, indeed, that it was hardly possible for their old friend to desert them under the circumstances.  But he merely represented an additional burden.

A knock at the sitting-room door disturbed her.  Anderson appeared.

“I am off to Banff, Lady Merton,” he said from the threshold.  “I think I have all your commissions.  Is your letter ready?”

She sealed it and gave it to him.  Then she looked up at him; and for the first time he saw her tremulous and shaken; not for her brother, but for himself.

“I don’t know how to thank you.”  She offered her hand; and one of those beautiful looks—­generous, friendly, sincere—­of which she had the secret.

He, too, flushed, his eyes held a moment by hers.  Then he, somewhat brusquely, disengaged himself.

“Why, I did nothing!  He was in no danger; the guide would have had him out in a twinkle.  I wish”—­he frowned—­“you wouldn’t look so done up over it.”

“Oh!  I am all right.”

“I brought you a book this morning.  Mercifully I left it in the drawing-room, so it hasn’t been in the lake.”

He drew it from his pocket.  It was a French novel she had expressed a wish to read.

She exclaimed,

“How did you get it?”

“I found Mariette had it with him.  He sends it me from Vancouver.  Will you promise to read it—­and rest?”

He drew a sofa towards the window.  The June sunset was blazing on the glacier without.  Would he next offer to put a shawl over her, and tuck her up?  She retreated hastily to the writing-table, one hand upon it.  He saw the lines of her gray dress, her small neck and head; the Quakerish smoothness of her brown hair, against the light.  The little figure was grace, refinement, embodied.  But it was a grace that implied an environment—­the cosmopolitan, luxurious environment, in which such women naturally move.

His look clouded.  He said a hasty good-bye and departed.  Elizabeth was left breathing quick, one hand on her breast.  It was as though she had escaped something—­or missed something.

As he left the hotel, Anderson found himself intercepted by Delaine in the garden, and paused at once to give him the latest news.

“The report is really good, everything considered,” he said, with a cordiality born of their common anxiety; and he repeated the doctor’s last words to himself.

“Excellent!” said Delaine; then, clearing his throat, “Mr. Anderson, may I have some conversation with you?”

Anderson looked surprised, threw him a keen glance, and invited him to accompany him part of the way to Laggan.  They turned into a solitary road, running between the woods.  It was late evening, and the sun was striking through the Laggan valley beneath them in low shafts of gold and purple.