This, Miss Schuyler decided, was perfectly correct, so far as it went; but she also felt tolerably certain that, while it was commendable, Hetty’s loyalty to her father would be strenuously tested, and did not alone account for her restlessness.
“And there was nothing else?” she said.
“No,” said Hetty, a little too decisively. “Of course! Any way, now I have told you we are not going to worry about these things to-day, and I drove fast partly because the trail is narrow, and one generally meets somebody here. Did it ever strike you, Flo, that if there’s anyone you know in a country that has a bridge in it, you will, if you cross it often enough, meet him there?”
“No,” and Miss Schuyler smiled satirically, “it didn’t, though one would fancy it was quite likely. I, however, remember that we met Larry here not very long ago. That Canadian blanket suit shows you off quite nicely, Hetty. It is especially adapted to your kind of figure.”
Hetty flicked the horses, then pulled them up again, and Miss Schuyler laughed as a sleigh with two men in it swung out from beneath the trees in front of them.
“This is, of course, a coincidence,” she said.
Hetty coloured. “Don’t be foolish, Flo,” she said. “How could I know he was coming?”
Flora Schuyler did not answer, and Hetty was edging her horses to the side of the trail, in which two sleighs could scarcely pass, when a shout came down.
“Wait. We’ll pull up and lead our team round.”
In another minute Grant stepped out of his sleigh, and would have passed if Hetty had not stopped him. She sat higher than her companion, and probably knew that the Canadian blanket costume, with its scarlet trimmings, became her slender figure. The crimson toque also went well with the clustering dark hair and dark eyes, and there was a brightness in the latter which was in keeping with the colour the cold wind had brought into the delicate oval face. The man glanced at her a moment, and then apparently found that a trace required his attention.