Yet not all is to be read upon the surface, even when one is so unskilled at dissembling as Edith Morrison. We may see signs, but we may not always translate their meaning. Her love affair had been one of long standing, begun when Robin had guided his first party over Marcy to the Lodge, then just built—herself a girl of less than a dozen years, trying to take a dead mother's place. How many times since then he had passed to and fro, with tourists in summer and hunting parties in winter. Often during fierce storms he had stayed at the Lodge for a week or more—gathered with her father and herself before the great log fire in the hall while the winds howled and the drifts banked up against the windows, gleaning from the Lodge library a knowledge of such things as books can teach—history, science and the outside world. Then had come the time when he had decided on a profession, when, with his hoarded earnings and such employment as he could find in the college town, he had begun his course in a school of engineering. The mountain winters without Robin had been lonely ones, but with her father she had devoted them to study, that she might not be left behind, and had taken the little school at last on the North Elba road in order to feel something of the independence which Robin knew. In this, the last summer of his mountain life, he had come to her father as chief guide, mainly that they might have more opportunity to perfect their plans for the years ahead. All the trails carried their story, and though young men still fell in love with Edith Morrison and maids with Robin Farnham, no moment of distrust had ever entered in.
But there would appear to be some fate which does not fail to justify the old adage concerning true love. With the arrival of Constance Deane at the Lodge, it became clear to Edith that there had been some curious change in Robin. It was not that he became in the least degree indifferent—if anything he had been more devoted than before. He made it a point to be especially considerate and attentive when Miss Deane was present—and in this itself there lay a difference. No other guest had ever affected his bearing toward her, one way or the other. Edith remembered, of course, that he had known the Deanes, long before, when the Lodge was not yet built. Like Constance, she had only been a little girl then, her home somewhere beyond the mountains where she had never heard of Robin. Yet her intuition told her that the fact of a long ago acquaintance between a child of wealthy parents and the farm boy who had sold them produce and built toy boats for the little girl could not have caused this difference now. It was nothing that Constance had engaged Robin to guide her about the woods and carry her book or her basket of specimens. Edith had been accustomed to all that, but this time there was a different attitude between guide and guest—something so subtle that it could hardly be put into words, yet wholly evident to the eyes of love. Half unconsciously, at first, Edith revolved the problem in her mind, trying to locate the cause of her impression. When next she saw them alone together, she strove to convince herself that it was nothing, after all. The very effort had made her the more conscious of a reality.
Now had come the third time—to-day—the moment before Frank Weatherby's arrival. They were approaching the house and did not see her, while she had lost not a detail of the scene. Robin's very carriage—and hers—the turn of a face, the manner of a word she could not hear, all spoke of a certain tenderness, an understanding, a sort of ownership, it seemed—none the less evident because, perhaps, they themselves were all unconscious of it. The mountain girl remarked the beauty of that other one and mentally compared it with her own. This girl was taller than she, and fairer. Her face was richer in its coloring—she carried herself like one of the noble ladies in the books. Oh, they were a handsome pair—and not unlike, she thought. Not that they resembled, yet something there was common to both. It must be that noble carriage of which she had been always so proud in Robin. There swept across her mental vision a splendid and heart-sickening picture of Robin going out into the world with this rich, cultured girl, and not herself, his wife. The Deanes were not pretentious people, and there was wealth enough already. They might well be proud of Robin. Edith cherished no personal bitterness toward either Constance or Robin—not yet. Neither did she realize to what lengths her impetuous, untrained nature might carry her, if really aroused. Her only conscious conclusion thus far was that Robin and Constance, without knowing it themselves, were drifting into a dangerous current, and that this new arrival might become a guide back to safety. Between Frank Weatherby and herself there was the bond of a common cause.
CHAPTER V
A FLOWER ON A MOUNTAIN TOP
Prosperous days came to the Lodge. Hospitable John Morrison had found a calling suited to his gifts when he came across the mountain and built the big log tavern at the foot of McIntyre. With July, guests multiplied, and for those whose duty it was to provide entertainment the problem became definite and practical. Edith Morrison found her duties each day heavier and Robin Farnham was seldom unemployed. Usually he was away with his party by daybreak and did not return until after nightfall. Wherever might lie his inclination there would seem to be little time for love making in such a season.
By the middle of the month the Deanes had taken possession of their camp on the west branch of the Au Sable, having made it habitable with a consignment of summer furnishings from New York, and through the united efforts of some half dozen mountain carpenters, urged in their deliberate labors by the owner, Israel Deane, an energetic New Englander who had begun life a penniless orphan and had become chief stockholder in no less than three commercial enterprises on lower Broadway.
With the removal of the Deanes Mr. Weatherby also became less in evidence at the Lodge. The walk between the Lodge and the camp was to him a way of enchantment. He had been always a poet at heart, and this wonderful forest reawakened old dreams and hopes and fancies which he had put away for the immediate and gayer things of life, hardly more substantial and far less real. To him this was a veritable magic wood—the habitation of necromancy—where robber bands of old might lurk; where knights in silver armor might do battle; where huntsmen in gold and green might ride, the vanished court of some forgotten king.