directly,
lightly, and without rhetoric, it enlarged upon their own comradeship.
It ran over pleasantly the days of their boyhood, when they were hardly
ever separated. It made distinct, yet with no obvious purpose, how good
were friendship and confidence--which might be the most unselfish thing
in the world--between two men. With the letter before him Frank Armour
saw his act in a new light.

As we said, it is possible if he had read it on the day when his trouble
came to him, he had not married Lali, or sent her to England on this--to
her--involuntary mission of revenge. It is possible, also, that there
came to him the first vague conception of the wrong he had done this
Indian girl, who undoubtedly married him because she cared for him
after her heathen fashion, while he had married her for nothing that
was commendable; not even for passion, which may be pardoned, nor for
vanity, which has its virtues. He had had his hour with circumstance;
circumstance would have its hour with him in due course. Yet there was
no extraordinary revulsion. He was still angry, cynical, and very sore.
He would see the play out with a consistent firmness. He almost managed
a smile when a letter was handed to him some weeks later, bearing his
solicitor's assurance that Mrs. Frank Armour and her maid had been
safely bestowed on the Aphrodite for England. This was the first act in
his tragic comedy.

CHAPTER II. A DIFFICULT SITUATION

When Mrs. Frank Armour arrived at Montreal she still wore her Indian
costume of clean, well-broidered buckskin, moccasins, and leggings,
all surmounted by a blanket. It was not a distinguished costume, but it
seemed suitable to its wearer. Mr. Armour's agent was in a quandary. He
had received no instructions regarding her dress. He felt, of course,
that, as Mrs. Frank Armour, she should put off these garments, and
dress, so far as was possible, in accordance with her new position. But
when he spoke about it to Mackenzie, the elderly maid and companion, he
found that Mr. Armour had said that his wife was to arrive in England
dressed as she was. He saw something ulterior in the matter, but it was
not his province to interfere. And so Mrs. Frank Armour was a passenger
by the Aphrodite in her buckskin garments.

What she thought of it all is not quite easy to say. It is possible that
at first she only considered that she was the wife of a white man,--a
thing to be desired, and that the man she loved was