She had expected to find the suggestion useless when she made it, for she understood his attitude. He would not take her money, and that, of course, was in one respect just as she would have had it; but, on the other hand, there were so many difficulties, and probably hazards, that she could save him.
“Well,” he said quietly, “it’s the only reason I can offer.”
There was silence for almost half a minute, and Ida felt that it was becoming singularly uncomfortable. So much could have been said by both of them that their conversation up to this point had suggested to her the crossing of a river on very thin ice. On the surface it was smooth, but the stream ran strong below, and there was the possibility that at any moment one of them might plunge through. Pride forbade her making any deliberate attempt to break the ice, but she would not have been very sorry had it suddenly given way. The man evidently was holding himself in hand, and she felt that she must emulate his reticence. She clung to the safe topic, in which she really was interested, as he had done.
“Won’t you go on?” she asked. “You were not successful in Vancouver, and you tried to raise the money in Montreal. It’s a little difficult, isn’t it?”
“Oh, yes,” said Weston, laughing, “as I’m situated, it certainly is. Of course, a good deal depends on how you set about this kind of thing, and the correct way would have been to come in on a Pullman instead of a cattle-car, and then engage a suite of rooms at the biggest hotel. Financiers and company jobbers seem rather shy of a man who gives Lemoine’s boarding-house as his address, and some of them are not quite civil when they hear what he has to say to them. In fact, I’m afraid that I shall have to give them up in a day or two.”
It was evident that he took his defeat quietly; but Ida thought that she knew what that quietness cost.
“How are you going to get back?” she asked.
She felt that it was rather a cruel question, for this was not the man to give up while he had a dollar in hand, and she was sure that he was going back to search for the mine again. Still, in one respect, she was a little vexed with him. His self-control was excellent, but there was rather too much of it.
“That,” he said, with a whimsical twinkle in his eyes, “is a point that will require rather careful consideration.”
Ida liked his smile, but the desire to startle him out of his reticence in one way or another became suddenly irresistible, and she changed the subject abruptly.