Brooke made her a little inclination, and said nothing, until, when another white-clad figure appeared among the pines, the girl turned to him.
"That is Mrs. Devine," she said. "Shall I present you?"
Brooke stopped abruptly, with, as the girl noticed once more, a very curious expression in his face. He meant to use whatever means were available against Devine, but he could not profit by a woman's kindness to creep into his adversary's house.
"No," he said, almost harshly. "Not to-night. It would be a pleasure—another time."
Barbara looked at him with big, grave eyes, and the faintest suggestion of color in her cheek. "Very well," she said. "I need not detain you."
Brooke swung round, and as Mrs. Devine strolled towards them, retired almost precipitately into the shadow of the pines, while, when he stopped again, with a curious little laugh, he was distinctly flushed in face.
XI.
AN EMBARRASSING POSITION.
The wooden conduit which sprang across a gorge just there on a slender trestle was full to the brim, and Brooke, who leaned on his long hammer shaft, watched the crystal water swirl by with a satisfaction which was distinctly new to him, while the roar it made as it plunged down into the valley from the end of the uncompleted flume came throbbing across the pines. Though it was a very crude piece of engineering, that trestle had cost him hours of anxious thought and days of strenuous labor, and now, standing above it, very wet and somewhat ragged, with hands as hard as a navvy's, he surveyed it with a pride which was scarcely warranted by its appearance. It was, however, the creation of his hands and brain, and evidently capable of doing its work effectively.
Then he smiled somewhat curiously as he remembered with what purpose he had taken over the contract to build the flume from its original holder, and, turning abruptly away, walked along it until he stopped where the torrent that fed it swirled round a pool. The latter had rapidly lowered its level since the big sluice was opened, and he stood looking at it intently while a project, which involved a fresh struggle with hard rock and forest, dawned upon him. He had gained his first practically useful triumph over savage Nature, and it had filled him with a desire he had never supposed himself capable of for a renewal of the conflict. A little sparkle came into his eyes, and he stood with head flung back a trifle and his corded arms uncovered to the elbow, busy with rough calculations, and once more oblivious of the fact that he was only there to play his part in a conspiracy, until a man with grey in his hair came out of the shadow of the pines.