"Thank you," Vane replied with a smile. "I'm afraid you have taken more trouble on our account than you need have done. Except on special occasions we have generally confined ourselves to strong green tea." Mabel looked at him in amazement. "Oh!" she said, "the West is certainly decadent. You should be here when the otter hounds are out. Why, it was only----" She broke off abruptly beneath her mother's withering glance, and when they were left alone, Vane and Carroll strolled out upon the terrace, pipe in hand. "I suppose you could put in a few weeks here," Vane remarked. "I could," Carroll replied. "There's an--atmosphere--about these old houses that appeals to me, perhaps because we have nothing like it in Canada. Besides, I think your friends mean to make things pleasant." "I'm glad you like them." Carroll understood that his comrade would not resent a candid expression of opinion. "I do; the girls in particular. They interest me. The younger one's of a type that's common in our country, though it's generally given room for free development into something useful there. Mabel's chaffing at the curb. It remains to be seen if she'll kick, and hurt herself in doing so, presently." Vane, who remembered that Evelyn had said something to the same effect, had already discovered that Carroll possessed a keen insight in certain matters. "And her sister?" he suggested. "You won't mind my saying that I'm inclined to be sorry for her? She has learned repression--been driven into line. That girl has character, but it's being cramped and stunted. You live in walled-in compartments in this country." Vane strolled along the terrace thoughtfully. He was not offended, and he understood his companion's attitude. Like other men of education and good upbringing, driven by unrest or disaster to the untrammelled life of the bush, Carroll had gained sympathy as well as knowledge. Facing facts candidly, he seldom indulged in decided protest against any of them. On the other hand, Vane was on occasion liable to outbreaks of indignation. "Well," said the latter at length, "I guess it's time to go to bed." CHAPTER VI UPON THE HEIGHTS. Vane rose early next morning, as he had been accustomed to do, and taking a towel with him made his way across dewy meadows and between tall hedgerows to the tarn. Stripping where the rabbit-cropped sward met the mossy boulders, he swam out joyously, breasting the little ripples which splashed and sparkled beneath the breeze that had got up with the sun. Coming back where the water lay in shadow beneath a larch wood, which as yet had not wholly lost its vivid green, he disturbed the paddling moor-hens and put up a mallard from a clump of swaying reeds. Then he dressed and turned homewards.