light. The little figure was
grace, refinement, embodied. But it was a grace that implied an
environment--the cosmopolitan, luxurious environment, in which such
women naturally move.

His look clouded. He said a hasty good-bye and departed. Elizabeth was
left breathing quick, one hand on her breast. It was as though she had
escaped something--or missed something.

As he left the hotel, Anderson found himself intercepted by Delaine in
the garden, and paused at once to give him the latest news.

"The report is really good, everything considered," he said, with a
cordiality born of their common anxiety; and he repeated the doctor's
last words to himself.

"Excellent!" said Delaine; then, clearing his throat, "Mr. Anderson, may
I have some conversation with you?"

Anderson looked surprised, threw him a keen glance, and invited him to
accompany him part of the way to Laggan. They turned into a solitary
road, running between the woods. It was late evening, and the sun was
striking through the Laggan valley beneath them in low shafts of gold
and purple.

"I am afraid what I have to say will be disagreeable to you," began
Delaine, abruptly. "And on this particular day--when we owe you so
much--it is more than disagreeable to myself. But I have no choice.
By some extraordinary chance, with which I beg you to believe my
own will has had nothing to do, I have become acquainted with
something--something that concerns you privately--something that I fear
will be a great shock to you."

Anderson stood still.

"What can you possibly mean?" he said, in growing amazement.

"I was accosted the night before last, as I was strolling along the
railway line, by a man I had never seen before, a man who--pardon me, it
is most painful to me to seem to be interfering with anyone's private
affairs--who announced himself as"--the speaker's nervous stammer
intervened before he jerked out the words--"as your father!"

"As my father? Somebody must be mad!" said Anderson quietly. "My father
has been dead ten years."

"I am afraid there is a mistake. The man who spoke to me is aware that
you suppose him dead--he had his own reasons, he declares, for allowing
you to remain under a misconception; he now wishes to reopen
communications with you, and to my great regret, to my indignation, I
may say he chose me--an entire stranger--as his intermediary. He seems
to have watched our party all the way from Winnipeg, where he first saw
you, casu