“Still,” she said, “you must go away. Violet must be free to change her mind, and, after all, it’s consoling to reflect that she has not seen so very much of you yet. In one way, it would please me if she did. It would free me of a rather heavy responsibility.”
She stopped a moment, and looked at him with softening eyes. “Go and run the water out of that valley, or do anything else that will make a mark,” she advised.
Nasmyth’s face was set as he replied: “If the thing is in any way possible, it shall be done. I think I will go into Victoria again to-day.”
He turned away and left her, and it was an hour later when she came upon Violet sitting alone in a shady walk beneath the pines. She looked at the girl severely.
“If I had been quite sure of what was going on, I should have sent that young man away,” she remarked. “As it is, I am very glad that he is going to Victoria.”
Violet slipped an arm about Mrs. Acton’s neck and kissed her shyly. “You would never have been so cruel, and now you are going to be my friend,” she said. “I don’t want him to go back to that horrible cañon.”
Mrs. Acton smiled. “I almost feel that I could shake both of you, but I suppose I shall have to marshal my forces on your behalf.”
She set about her plans that evening, when she invaded Acton’s smoking-room, and her husband listened to her with a little dry smile.
“I guess this is about the first time I have ever known you to do a real foolish thing,” he observed.