"I wish I had my men," he said. "The Mounted Volunteers would teach these fellows a lesson."
"Well, we may see that before we're many days older, sir," answered the officer. "Mr. Medland'll be here to-morrow, and heaven knows what they'll be up to then."
CHAPTER XXVIII.
STEALING A MARCH.
Alicia Derosne had a fantastic dream that night. She saw Medland again chasing a butterfly, as she had seen him on the day he came to Government House to receive his office. The butterfly floated always just over his head, and he always came near to catching it, yet never caught it. Then, by one of sleep's strange transformations, she seemed to be herself in spirit in the butterfly, and she knew that it flew so near because desire brought it, that it longed to be caught, and yet, at the last, by some sudden impulse, avoided his net. At last, as if wearied, he turned from her to another fluttering thing, and that he caught. And she heard a great murmur of voices applauding him, and he smiled and was content with his prize. Then she, the first butterfly, could not be happy unless she were caught also, envying the other, and she went and fluttered and spread her wings before his eyes, but he would not heed her, nor
stretch the net over her, but smiled in triumph at the bright colours of his prize and the murmur of applause. And, with drooping wings, the first butterfly fell to the ground and died.
It needed no Joseph to interpret this dream. When he had called, she would not come. Now he would forget her and turn to the life of ambition and power that he loved. He would rule men, and trouble his head or his heart no more with the vagaries of girls and the strict scruples of their code. And she—what was there left for her? "The last time," he had said. There was nothing for her to do but what the neglected butterfly had done. In a few weeks more the sea would lie between them, and she would be no more to him, nor he to her, than a memory—a memory soon to fade in him, whose days and thoughts were so full; in her, it seemed, always to endure, ousting everything else, reigning in triumphant sorrow in an empty heart.
The news of the final result of the elections which Eleanor Scaife brought her in the morning while she was still in bed, presented to her mind another picture of the man, which appealed to her almost more strongly.