those born into it!

"I shall be here perhaps a month," said Anderson, "but then I shall be
wanted at Ottawa."

And he began to describe a new matter in which he had been lately
engaged--a large development scheme applying to some of the great Peace
River region north of Edmonton. And as he told her of his August journey
through this noble country, with its superb rivers, its shining lakes
and forests, and its scattered settlers, waiting for a Government which
was their servant and not their tyrant, to come and help their first
steps in ordered civilisation; to bring steamers to their waters,
railways to link their settlements, and fresh settlers to let loose the
fertile forces of their earth--she suddenly saw in him his old self--the
Anderson who had sat beside her in the crossing of the prairies, who had
looked into her eyes the day of Roger's Pass. He had grown older and
thinner; his hair was even lightly touched with grey. But the traces in
him of endurance and of pain were like the weathering of a fine
building; mellowing had come, and strength had not been lost.

Yet still no word of feeling, of intimacy even. Her soul cried out
within her, but there was no answer. Then, when it was time to dress,
and she led him through the hall, to the inlaid staircase with its
famous balustrading--early English ironwork of extraordinary
delicacy--and through the endless corridors upstairs, old and dim, but
crowded with portraits and fine furniture, Anderson looked round him in
amazement.

"What a wonderful place!"

"It is too old!" cried Elizabeth, petulantly; then with a touch of
repentance--"Yet of course we love it. We are not so stifled here as you
would be."

He smiled and did not reply.

"Confess you have been stifled--ever since you came to England."

He drew a long breath, throwing back his head with a gesture which made
Elizabeth smile. He smiled in return.

"It was you who warned me how small it would all seem. Such little
fields--such little rivers--such tiny journeys! And these immense towns
treading on each other's heels. Don't you feel crowded up?"

"You are home-sick already?"

He laughed--"No, no!" But the gleam in his eyes admitted it. And
Elizabeth's heart sank--down and down.

* * * * *

A few more guests arrived for Sunday--a couple of politicians, a
journalist, a poet, one or two agreeable women, a young Lord S., who had
just succeeded to one of the oldest of