"Don't of course imagine anything absurd! He is just a young Scotch engineer, who seems to have made some money as people do make money here--quickly and honestly--and is shortly going into Parliament. They say that he is sure to be a great man. To us--to Philip and me, he has been extremely kind. I only meant that he seems to be in place here--or anywhere, indeed, where the world is moving; while Mr. Arthur, in Canada, is a walking anachronism. He is out of perspective; he doesn't fit.
"You will say, that if I married him, it would not be to live in Canada, and once at home again, the old estimates and 'values' would reassert themselves. But in a sense--don't be alarmed--I shall always live in Canada. Or, rather, I shall never be quite the same again; and Mr. Arthur would find me a restless, impracticable, discontented woman.
"Would it not really be kinder if I suggested to him to go home by California, while we come back again through the Rockies? Don't you think it would? I feel that I have begun to get on his nerves--as he on mine. If you were only here! But, I assure you, he doesn't _look_ miserable; and I think he will bear up very well. And if it will be any comfort to you to be told that I know what is meant by the gnawing of the little worm, Compunction, then be comforted, dearest; for it gnaws horribly, and out of all proportion--I vow--to my crimes.
"Philip is better on the whole, and has taken an enormous fancy to Mr. Anderson. But, as I have told you all along, he is not so much better as you and I hoped he would be. I take every care of him that I can, but you know that he is not wax, when it comes to managing. However, Mr. Anderson has been a great help."
Recollections of this letter, and other thoughts besides, coming from much deeper strata of the mind than she had been willing to reveal to her mother, kept slipping at intervals through Elizabeth's consciousness, as she sat beside the lake.
A step beside her startled her, and she looked up to see Delaine approaching.
"Out already, Mr. Arthur! But _I_ have had breakfast!"
Elizabeth did not answer, but her smiling eyes swept the glorious circle of the lake.
"How soon will it all be spoilt and vulgarised?" said Delaine, with a shrug. "Next year, I suppose, a funicular, to the top of the glacier."