Eveline Annersly decided to tell him. "The two things go together. It happens now and then that a woman has to choose between her relations and her husband. Carrie chose you. Those jewels are, you know, worth a good deal of money, and, while they belong to her, there is reason for believing that, unless she had shown herself resolute, Jimmy would have had them instead. In fact, I have a notion that her father found it distressingly inconvenient to send them. One can raise money on such things in England."
A deeper hue crept into Leland's sun-darkened face. "I understand now—that is, some of it," he said. "It would be better if you made the whole thing clear."
"Well, there was a time when you were rather hard pressed for a thousand pounds. Carrie, if I remember, found you a much larger sum. But she evidently did not tell you where her jewels went."
The man's eyes glowed. When at last he spoke, there was a thrill in his voice.
"It hurts me, in a way, to think of it—but what does that matter?" he said. "Her jewels, everything she had . . . when I was in a tight place, she brought them all to me. . . . It was the two thousand pounds that saved me. . . . Shall I have time enough to get even with her in all my life, Aunt Eveline?"
Eveline Annersly smiled reassuringly. "One ought to do a good many little things in a lifetime, and, after all, it is deeds of gratitude that please us most."
They went in some little time afterwards. While they sat at supper together, one of Leland's distant neighbours came in.
"I've ridden straight from the settlement. Macartney had a wire from Winnipeg just before I left," he said. "Wheat jumped up another cent to-day."
Leland looked across the table at Gallwey. "Tom," he said, "before I fell sick, my broker sent along an offer for about half the crop. I wouldn't sell. But I have wondered once or twice if the other man made another bid."
"He did," said Gallwey, with a quiet smile. "There were, as you may remember, two or three weeks when we told you very little, and you wouldn't have understood anything during the first of them. At the time everybody round here was anxious to sell—that is, except Mrs. Leland. By her instructions, I wrote your broker that you meant to hold on to every bushel."