"I'm afraid Miss Chisholm's disappointed," he explained. "No," said Evelyn; "that would be most ungrateful. I only expected a more characteristic example of sea cookery. After what Mr. Vane told us, a lunch like the one you provided, with glass and silver, struck me as rather an anachronism." "It's better to be broken in to sea cookery gently," Vane interposed with some dryness. "It's a poor compliment to take it for granted that we're afraid of a little hardship. Besides, I don't think you're right." Vane, who left the helm to Carroll, went below, and the latter smiled at Evelyn. "He won't be long," he informed her. "He hasn't got rid of his primitive habits yet." Vane came up satisfied in about ten minutes, and glancing about him before he resumed the helm, noticed that it was blowing fresher, but it did not inconvenience the party, and as they ran homewards the breeze gradually died away. The broad inlet lay still in the moonlight when they crept across it with the water lapping very faintly about the bows, and it was over a mirror-like surface they rowed ashore. Nairn was waiting at the foot of the steps, and Evelyn walked back with him, feeling, she could not tell exactly why, that she had been drawn closer to the sloop's helmsman. CHAPTER XXIII VANE PROVES OBDURATE. Vane spent two or three weeks very pleasantly in Vancouver, for Evelyn, of whom he saw a good deal, was gracious to him. The embarrassment both had felt on their first meeting in the Western city had speedily vanished; they had resumed their acquaintance on what was ostensibly a purely friendly footing, and, since both avoided any reference to what had taken place in England, it had ripened into a mutual confidence. This would have been less probable in the older country, where they would have been continually reminded of what the Chisholm family had expected of them; but the past seldom counts for much in the new and changeful West, whose inhabitants look forward to the future. Indeed, there is something in its atmosphere which banishes regret and retrospection; and when Evelyn looked back at all, she felt inclined to wonder why she had once been so troubled by the man's satisfaction with her company. She decided that this could not have been the result of any aversion from him, and that it was merely an instinctive revolt against the part her parents had wished to force upon her. Chisholm and his wife had blundered as such people often do, for it is possible that had they adopted a perfectly neutral attitude everything would have gone as they desired.