"I think you are trying to put me off. You haven't given me an answer."
"Well, perhaps 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 people—and that makes me especially grateful for your offer."
For the next few moments Jessy 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 the timber?"
"Yes. 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. "What's the way ye did 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."
"I haven't a doubt of it," Vane declared. "On the other hand, I hardly think that even one of your suppers would quite have put right the defect in my appearance you mentioned. You see, the cause of it has been at work for some time."
Mrs. Nairn regarded him with half-amused compassion.
"If ye'll come over every evening, we'll soon cure that. I would have been down sooner if Alic had not kept me. He's writing letters, and there was a matter or two he wanted to ask my opinion on."