"Are you really grieved because I won't take those hats?" she asked lightly.
"I am," Vane confessed, and then proceeded to explain with rather unnecessary ingenuousness: "I'm still more vexed with the state of things that it's typical of—I suppose I mean the restrictedness of this civilized life. When you want to do anything in the bush, you take the ax and set about it; but here you're continually running up against some quite unnecessary barrier."
"One understands that it's worse in England," Jessy returned dryly. "But in regard to Miss Hartley, I'll recommend her to my friends, as far as I can."
Vane made an abrupt movement, and Jessy realized by his expression that he had suddenly become oblivious of her presence. She had no doubt about the reason, for just then Evelyn Chisholm had entered the room. The lamplight fell upon her as she crossed the threshold, and Jessy recognized unwillingly that she looked surprisingly handsome. Handsome, however, was not the word Vane would have used. He thought Evelyn looked exotic: highly cultivated, strangely refined, as though she had grown up in a rarefied atmosphere in which nothing rank could thrive. Exactly what suggested this it was difficult to define; but the man felt that she had brought along with her the clean, chill air of the heights where the cloud-berries bloom. She was a flower of the dim and misty North, which has nevertheless its flashes of radiant, ethereal beauty. Though Evelyn had her faults, the impression she made on Vane was, perhaps, more or less justifiable.
Then he remembered that the girl had been offered to him and he had refused the gift. He wondered how he had exerted the necessary strength of will, for he was conscious that admiration, respect, pity, had now, changed and melted into sudden passion. His blood tingled, and he felt strangely happy.
Laying a check upon his thoughts, he resumed a desultory conversation with Jessy, but he betrayed himself several times during it, for no change of his expression was lost upon the girl. At length she let him go. It was some time, however, before he secured a place beside Evelyn, a little apart from the others. He was now unusually quiet and self-contained.
"Nairn promised me an astonishment this evening, but it exceeds all my expectations," he said. "How are your people?"
Evelyn informed him that their health was satisfactory and added, watching him the while:
"Gerald sent his best remembrances."
"Thank you," Vane responded in a casual manner; "I am glad to have them."