“Just so. No doubt it will be necessary; but you’re not the only person concerned.”
“But who’s likely to take notice of the thing?”
“I can’t tell; but you make enemies as well as friends, and you’re walking in slippery places which you’re not altogether accustomed to. You can’t meet your difficulties with the axe here.”
“That’s true,” assented Vane, and they went in to dinner.
After the meal, they walked across to Nairn’s, and when they had been ushered into a room in which several other guests were assembled, Vane sat down on a sofa, beside Jessie Horsfield.
“I want to thank you; I was over at Miss Hartley’s this afternoon,” he began.
“I understood you were at the mining meeting.”
“So I was; your brother would tell that—-”
Vane broke off, remembering that he had defeated Horsfield.
“You were opposed to him; but it doesn’t follow that I share all his views. Perhaps I ought to be a stauncher partisan.”