“I don’t suppose it will give me any trouble. Of course, it must be embarrassing to feel you had a helpless young woman on your hands.”
Then a thought flashed into her mind, as she remembered what she had seen at the station some months ago. “I wonder if the situation is an altogether unusual one to you,” she continued. “Have you never let your pity run away with your judgment before?”
“You wouldn’t expect me to proclaim my charities,” Vane objected humorously which was the only means of parrying the question that occurred to him.
“I think you are trying to put me off. You haven’t given me an answer.”
“I believe I was able to make things easier for somebody else not very long ago,” Vane confessed, reluctantly, but without embarrassment. “I now see that I might have done harm without meaning to do so. It’s sometimes extraordinarily difficult to help folks—which is why I’m so grateful for your offer.”
For the next few moments Jessie sat silent. It was clear that she had misjudged him, for although she was not one who demanded too much from human nature, the fact that Kitty Blake had arrived in Vancouver in his company had undoubtedly rankled in her mind. Now she acquitted him of any blame, and it was a relief to do so. She changed the subject abruptly.
“I suppose you will make another attempt to find timber?” she suggested.
“Yes,” said Vane. “In a week or two.”
He had hardly spoken when Mrs. Nairn came in and welcomed him with her usual friendliness.
“I’m glad to see ye, though ye’re looking thin,” she said. “Why did ye not come straight to us, instead of going to the hotel? Ye would have got as good a supper as they would give ye there.”