"But you were left the money, or most of it?" she said.
"Yes," said Deringham grimly. "I was left the money."
The girl asked nothing further, for there was something in the man's face which warned her not to press that subject. She knew that her father had long acted as financial adviser to the late owner of Carnaby, but it was not astonishing that Deringham had not told her he had exceeded the discretion allowed him, and been singularly unfortunate in his speculations.
She rose, and a man who like themselves had finished his meal leisurely followed them outside into the verandah. He smiled as he drew out a chair for the girl, and then sat down opposite her father with a card in his hand.
"Glad to meet you, Mr. Deringham. I'll introduce myself," said he.
Deringham took the card handed him, and glanced with an air of quiet indifference at the stranger, while his daughter looked apparently straight past him towards the climbing pines. Nevertheless, she had seen the man, and was not pleased with him. He had a somewhat fleshy face, beady black eyes with a boldness in them that was more akin to insolence than courage, and a full-lipped, mobile mouth. His dress was correct enough, though he wore a somewhat ample ring with a diamond in it, and his watchchain was too heavy and prominent, but there was a suggestion of coarseness about him. Her father, leaning forward in his chair with an air of languid curiosity, the card in his slender fingers, appeared his antithesis, and yet the girl fancied there was a resemblance in the expression of the two faces. She also felt her dislike for the stranger increased when she saw for the first time the look of greed and cunning in his face reflected in that of her father. She had hitherto only pictured him as a skilful financier, but now she saw qualities she had never suspected in him revealed as by a daring caricature.
"Willard Hallam," Deringham read aloud. "Hallam and Vose. Land and mining agents. Advances made on mineral claims."
"Yes," said the stranger, smiling. "That's me."
Deringham made no comment, but laid the card down beside him. "I wonder," he said indifferently, "how you came to know me."
The chilling evenness of his voice seemed to irritate the other man, and Alice Deringham was conscious of a faint amusement as she glanced at them. Deringham in his tweed travelling attire, which, worn with apparent carelessness, seemed to hang with every fold just where it should be, was wholly at his ease, and there was a trace of half-expressed toleration in his thin, finely-cut face, while Hallam appeared to become coarse and embarrassed by comparison. He probably did not feel so, for diffidence of any kind is not common in the West, but he may have realized that in any delicate fencing the advantage would lie with Deringham. Both, producing nothing and living upon the toil of their fellows, played the same game, but, while the stakes and counters are very similar, one played it in Vancouver and the other in London, where a more subtle finesse is demanded from the players.