Evelyn was silent and Vane said nothing for a while. He had been in the air all day, and though this was nothing new to him, he was content to sit lazily still and leave the opening of conversation to his companion. In the meanwhile it was pleasant to glance towards her now and then. The pale-tinted dress became her, and he felt that the room would have looked less cheerful had she been away. The effect she had on him was difficult to analyse, though he lazily tried. She appealed to him by the grace of her carriage, the poise of her head, her delicate colouring, and the changing lights in her eyes; but behind these points something stronger and deeper was expressed through them. He fancied she possessed qualities he had not hitherto encountered, which would become more precious when they were fully understood. He thought of her as wholesome in mind; one who sought for the best; but she was also endowed with an ethereal something that could not be defined. Then a simile struck him: she was like the snow that towers high into the empyrean in British Columbia; in which he was wrong, for there was warm human passion in the girl, though it was sleeping yet. By and by, he told himself, he was getting absurdly sentimental, and he instinctively fumbled for his pipe and stopped. Evelyn noticed this and smiled. "You needn't hesitate," she said. "The Dene is redolent of cigars, and Gerald smokes everywhere when he is at home." "Is he likely to turn up?" Vane asked. "It's ever so long since I've seen him." "I'm afraid not. In fact, Gerald's rather under a cloud just now. I may as well tell you this, because you are sure to hear of it sooner or later. He has been extravagant, and, as he assures us, extraordinarily unlucky." "Stocks and shares?" suggested Vane, who was acquainted with some of the family tendencies. Evelyn hesitated a moment. "That would have been more readily forgiven him. I believe he has speculated on the turf as well." Vane was surprised, since he understood that Gerald Chisholm was a barrister, and betting on the turf was not an amusement he would have associated with that profession. "Then," he said thoughtfully, "I must run up and see him later on." Evelyn felt sorry she had spoken. Gerald needed help, which his father was not in a position to offer. She was not censorious of other people's faults; but it was impossible to be blind to some aspects of her brother's character, and she would have preferred that Vane should not meet Gerald while the latter was embarrassed by financial difficulties. She changed the subject. "Several of the things you told me about your life in Canada interested me," she said. "It must have been bracing to feel that you depended upon your own efforts and stood on your own feet, free from all the hampering customs that are common here."