ilent, and Mrs. Acton, who surveyed him again with
thoughtful eyes, was not surprised that he should have appealed to the
girl's imagination. The man was of a fine lean symmetry, and straight
of limb. The stamp of a clean life was on him, showing itself in the
brightness of his eyes and his clear bronzed skin, while he had, as
Wisbech had said, the classical Nasmyth features. These things, as
Mrs. Acton admitted, counted for something, while the faint lines upon
his face, and the suggestive hardness that now and then crept into it,
were, she decided, likely to excite a young woman's curiosity.

"Well," she said, "I feel myself considerably to blame, and I may
admit that I had at first intended to make my husband get rid of you.
I really don't know why I didn't. You can make what you like of
that."

Nasmyth bowed with a deferential smile, and she laughed.

"Still," she said, "you must go away. Violet must be free to change
her mind, and, after all, it's consoling to reflect that she has not
seen so very much of you yet. In one way, it would please me if she
did. It would free me of a rather heavy responsibility."

She stopped a moment, and looked at him with softening eyes. "Go and
run the water out of that valley, or do anything else that will make a
mark," she advised.

Nasmyth's face was set as he replied: "If the thing is in any way
possible, it shall be done. I think I will go into Victoria again
to-day."

He turned away and left her, and it was an hour later when she came
upon Violet sitting alone in a shady walk beneath the pines. She
looked at the girl severely.

"If I had been quite sure of what was going on, I should have sent
that young man away," she remarked. "As it is, I am very glad that he
is going to Victoria."

Violet slipped an arm about Mrs. Acton's neck and kissed her shyly.
"You would never have been so cruel, and now you are going to be my
friend," she said. "I don't want him to go back to that horrible
canyon."

Mrs. Acton smiled. "I almost feel that I could shake both of you, but
I suppose I shall have to marshal my forces on your behalf."

She set about her plans that evening, when she invaded Acton's
smoking-room, and her husband listened to her with a little dry
smile.

"I guess this is about the first time I have ever known you to do a
real foolish thing," he observed.

"Well," said Mrs. Acton, "it is, perhaps, to my credit that I have
done one now. Anyway, I like the man."