“The dam seems to have been rather an undertaking, and I am glad he contrived to carry it through successfully,” he commented. Then he looked at her with a twinkle in his eyes. “I do not know yet where he got the idea from.”
The girl flushed. This was, she felt, regrettable, but she could not help it, for the man’s keenness was disconcerting, and she was, also, a little indignant with him. She had recognized that Derrick Nasmyth’s character had its defects, but she was by no means prepared to admit it to his relatives.
“Then it didn’t occur to you that an idea of that kind was likely to appeal to your nephew?” she said.
“No,” declared Wisbech, “to be candid, it didn’t.” He smiled again. “After all, I don’t think we need trouble about that point, especially as it seems he has acquitted himself very well. I, however, can’t help feeling it was in some respects fortunate that he fell into your hands.”
Laura was usually composed, but he saw her face harden, for she was angry at his insistence. “It is evident,” he went on, “that he would not have had the opportunity of building the dam unless you had nursed him back to health and taken him into your employment.”
“It was my father who asked him to stay on at the ranch.”
“I am not sure that the correction has any very great significance. One would feel tempted to believe that your father is, to some extent, in the habit of doing what you suggest.”
Laura sat still a moment or two. She was certainly angry with the stranger, and yet, in spite of that fact, she felt that she liked him. There was a candour in his manner which pleased her, as his good-humoured shrewdness did, though she would have preferred not to have 123 the shrewdness exercised upon herself. It may be that he guessed what she was thinking, for he smiled.
“Miss Waynefleet,” he said, “I almost fancy we should make excellent friends, but there is a point on which I should like you to enlighten me. Why did you take the trouble to make me understand that you were doing nothing unusual when you asked me to dinner?”
Laura laughed. “Well,” she said, “if one must be accurate, I do not exactly know. I may have been a little unwise in endeavouring to impress it on you. Why did you consider it worth while to explain you had very seldom been in the saddle?”