When she had told him this, Nasmyth sat thoughtfully silent a minute or two. Her courage and hatred of injustice had stirred him deeply, for he knew what it must have cost her to discuss the subject of her father’s wrongdoing with him. He was also once more overwhelmingly sorry for her. There was nobody she could turn to for support or sympathy, and it was evident that if he succeeded in foiling Hames, it would alienate her from her father. Waynefleet, he felt, was not likely to forgive her for the efforts she had made to save him from being drawn into an act of profitable treachery.
“Well,” he said after a moment’s thought, “I am going on to Victoria to see what can be done, but there is another matter that is troubling me. I wonder if it has occurred to you that your father will find it very difficult to stay on at the ranch when the part he has played becomes apparent. I am almost afraid the boys will be vindictive.”
“I believe he has not expected to carry on the ranch much longer. It is heavily mortgaged, and he has been continually pressed for money.”
“Has he any plans?”
Laura smiled wearily. “He has always plans. I believe he intends to go to one of the towns on Puget 294 Sound, and start a land agency.” She made a dejected gesture. “I don’t expect him to succeed in it, but perhaps I could earn a little.”
Nasmyth set his lips tight, and there was concern in his face. She looked very forlorn, and he knew that she was friendless. He could hardly bring himself to contemplate the probability of her being cast adrift, saddled with a man who, it was evident, would only involve her in fresh disasters, and, he fancied, reproach her as the cause of them. A gleam of anger crept into his eyes.
“If your father had only held on with us, I could have saved you this,” he observed.
There was a great sadness in Laura’s smile.
“Still,” she replied, “he didn’t, and perhaps you couldn’t have expected it of him. He sees only the difficulties, and I am afraid never tries to face them.”
Nasmyth felt his self-control deserting him. He was conscious of an almost overwhelming desire to save the girl from the results of her father’s dishonesty and folly, and he could see no way in which it could be done. Then it was borne in upon him that in another moment or two he would probably say or do something that he would regret afterwards, and she would resent, and, rising stiffly, he held out his hand.