“Back to the world I belong to,” answered Nasmyth,––“to the railroad, in the first case. I’m not sure that Miss Hamilton would like to feel that I was in the house.”
Mrs. Acton made no protest, and ten minutes later he had crossed the clearing and plunged into the Bush.
Mrs. Acton, crossing the veranda, laid her hand on the girl’s shoulder.
“I naturally don’t know what he said to you, but I can’t help believing that he acquitted himself rather well,” she observed. “After all, it must have been a little painful to him.”
“Perhaps it was,” replied Violet. “Still, I don’t think it hurt him dreadfully.”
She was more or less correct in this surmise, for, as Nasmyth walked on through the Bush, he became conscious of a faint relief.