y see a bit of it. And here one sees it _all_--all,
at once!--as a great march--the march of a new people to its home. Fifty
years ago, wolves and bears, and buffaloes--twelve years ago even, the
great movement had not begun--and now, every week, a new town!--the new
nation spreading, spreading over the open land, irresistibly, silently;
no one setting bounds to it, no one knowing what will come of it!"

She checked herself. Her voice had been subdued, but there was a tremor
in it. Delaine caught her up, rather helplessly.

"Ah! isn't that the point? What will come of it? Numbers and size aren't
everything. Where is it all tending?"

She looked up at him, still exalted, still flushed, and said softly, as
though she could not help it, "'On to the bound of the waste--on to the
City of God!'"

He gazed at her in discomfort. Here was an Elizabeth Merton he had yet
to know. No trace of her in the ordinary life of an English
country house!

"You _are_ Canadian!" he said with a smile.

"No, no!" said Elizabeth eagerly, recovering herself, "I am only a
spectator. _We_ see the drama--we feel it--much more than they can who
are in it. At least"--she wavered--"Well!--I have met one man who seems
to feel it!"

"Your Canadian friend?"

Elizabeth nodded.

"He sees the vision--he dreams the dream!" she said brightly. "So few
do. But I think he does. Oh, dear--_dear_!--how time flies! I must go
and see what Philip is after."

Delaine was left discontented. He had come to press his suit, and he
found a lady preoccupied. Canada, it seemed, was to be his rival! Would
he ever be allowed to get in a word edgewise?

Was there ever anything so absurd, so disconcerting? He looked forward
gloomily to a dull afternoon, in quest of fat cattle, with a car-full of
unknown Canadians.

CHAPTER IV

At three o'clock, in the wide Winnipeg station, there gathered on the
platform beside Lady Merton's car a merry and motley group of people. A
Chief Justice from Alberta, one of the Senators for Manitoba, a rich
lumberman from British Columbia, a Toronto manufacturer--owner of the
model farm which the party was to inspect, two or three ladies, among
them a little English girl with fine eyes, whom Philip Gaddesden at once
marked for approval; and a tall, dark-complexioned man with hollow
cheeks, large ears, and a long chin, who was introduced, with particular
emphasis, to Elizabeth by Anderson, as "Mr. Felix Mariette"--Member of
Parliame