irit, 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
could not escape had been applied to him on this journey, by
fortune--and Elizabeth!--and that he was not standing it well. And the
worst of it was that as his discouragement in the matter of Lady Merton
increased, so also did his distaste for this raw, new country, without
associations, without art, without antiquities, in which he should
never, never have chosen to spend one of his summers of this short life,
but for the charms of Elizabeth! And the more boredom he was conscious
of, the less congenial and sympathetic, naturally, did he become as a
companion for Lady Merton. Of this he was dismally aware. Well! he
hoped, bitterly, that she knew what she was about, and could take care
of herself. This man she had made friends with was good-looking and, by
his record, possessed ability. He had fairly gentlemanly manners, also;
though, in Delaine's opinion, he was too self-confident on his own
account, and too boastful on Canada's, But he was a man of humble
origin, son of a farmer who seemed, by the way, to be dead; and
grandson, so Delaine had heard him say, through his mot