ang. Now, that young man has nothing. If he
fails, he won't have a dollar to get out of this city with, for the
mine won't count. He can't even hold it unless he puts in his
assessment work on it, and he couldn't do that without something to
live on in the meanwhile. He hasn't a friend in Canada from whom he
could borrow a dollar."

Ida said nothing, and Stirling added, as if in explanation:

"I might be willing to give him a lift if it were absolutely
necessary, but it seems that he's quite determined not to take a favor
from me. He didn't offer me any reason for adopting that attitude."

He looked at the girl rather curiously, and she noticed the
significance of his last sentence. Stirling had not said that he was
unacquainted with Weston's reason, but he seemed to be waiting for her
to make a suggestion, and she found the situation embarrassing.

"Well," she said, "he probably has one that seems sufficient to him."

Stirling said nothing further on the subject, and presently went out
and left her; but her expression changed when he had done so, and she
sat very still, with one hand tightly closed, for she now realized
what the cost of her lover's defeat might be. In his case it would not
mean a grapple with temporary difficulties, or a curtailing of
unnecessary luxuries, but disaster complete and irretrievable, perhaps
for years. If he failed, he would vanish out of her life; and it was
becoming rapidly clear that, however hard pressed he might be, there
was, after all, no way in which she could help him. The unyielding
pride or stubbornness which animated him at length appeared an almost
hateful thing.

Ida did not sleep particularly well that night, and when she went down
to breakfast rather late the next morning there was a letter beside
her plate. She looked up at her father when she had opened it.

"Susan Frisingham is coming here from Toronto for a day or two before
she goes back to New York," she said. "She suggests taking me back
with her."

"Ah!" said Stirling, with a barely perceptible trace of dryness. "You
don't want to go just now?"

Ida flashed another glance at him, and noticed the faint twinkle in
his eyes. She felt almost disconcerted, for it suggested
comprehension, and she certainly did not want to go. She could, it
seemed, do nothing to help the man she loved, and, for that matter,
she could scarcely encourage or sympathize with him openly, but she
would not seek pleasure elsewhere whil