It did not distress Zilda that he should quarrel with her father’s bill; she had no higher idea in character than that each should seek his own in all things; but when Gilby talked of giving her a present she shrank instinctively with an air of offence.  This air of offence was the one betrayal of her affection which he could observe, and he did not gather very much of the truth from it.

‘I will give you a watch, Zilda,’ he said, ’a gold watch; you will like that.’

‘No, monsieur.’  Zilda’s face was flushed and her head was high in the air.

‘I will give you a ring; you would like that—­a golden ring.’

‘No, monsieur; I would not like it at all.’

Gilby retired from the discussion that day feeling some offence and a good deal of consternation.  He thought the best thing would be to have nothing more to do with Zilda; but the next day, in the bustle of his departure, remembering all she had done for him, he relented entirely, and he gave her a kiss.

Afterwards, when the train was at the station, and Chaplot and Zilda had put his bags and his wraps beside him on a cushioned seat, Gilby turned and with great politeness accosted two fine ladies who were travelling in the same carriage and with whom he had a slight acquaintance.  His disposition was at once genial and vain; he had been so long absent from the familiar faces of the town that his heart warmed to the first townsfolk he saw; but he was also ambitious:  he wished to appear on good terms with these women, who were his superiors in social position.

They would not have anything to do with him, which offended him very much; they received his greeting coldly and turned away; they said within themselves that he was an intolerably vulgar little person.

But all her life Zilda Chaplot lived a better and happier woman because she had known him.

VII

THE SYNDICATE BABY

Some miles above the city of La Motte, the blue Merrian river widens into the Lake of St. Jean.  In the Canadian summer the shores of this lake are as pleasant a place for an outing as heart could desire.  The inhabitants of the city build wooden villas there, and spend the long warm days in boats upon the water.  The families that live in these wooden villas do not take boarders; that was the origin of ’The Syndicate.’  It consisted of some two dozen bachelors who were obliged to sit upon office stools all day in the hot city.  ‘If,’ said they, ’we could live upon the lake, we could have our morning swim and our evening sail; and the trains would take us in and out of the city.’

The one or two uncomfortable hotels of this region were already overcrowded, so these bachelors said to each other—­’Go to; we will put our pence together, and build us a boat-house with an upper story, and live therein.’