could not, therefore, have found a better showman. But why any showman
at all? What did she know about this man who had sprung so rapidly into
intimacy with herself and her brother? Yet Delaine could not honestly
accuse him of presuming on a chance acquaintance, since it was not to be
denied that it was Philip Gaddesden himself, who had taken an invalid's
capricious liking to the tall, fair-haired fellow, and had urgently
requested--almost forced him to come back to them.

Delaine was not a little bruised in spirit, and beginning to be angry.
During the solitary day he had been alone with them Elizabeth had been
kindness and complaisance itself. But instead of that closer
acquaintance, that opportunity for a gradual and delightful courtship on
which he had reckoned, when the restraint of watching eyes and
neighbourly tongues should be removed, he was conscious that he had
never been so remote from her during the preceding winter at home, as he
was now that he had journeyed six thousand miles simply and solely on
the chance of proposing to her. He could not understand how anything so
disastrous, and apparently so final, could have happened to him in one
short week! Lady Merton--he saw quite plainly--did not mean him to
propose to her, if she could possibly avoid it. She kept Philip with
her, and gave no opportunities. And always, as before, she was possessed
and bewitched by Canada! Moreover, the Chief Justice and the French
Canadian, Mariette, had turned up at the hotel two days before, on their
way to Vancouver. Elizabeth had been sitting, figuratively, at the feet
of both of them ever since; and both had accepted an invitation to join
in the Kicking Horse party, and were delaying their journey West
accordingly.

Instead of solitude, therefore, Delaine was aware of a most troublesome
amount of society. Aware also, deep down, that some test he resented but