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All innocently she wove her spell about this man. He was lonely, she knew; and she, in her ardent, great-souled pity for all such, was willing to make cheerful sacrifice of her own time and strength if thus she might ease but a little the burden that galled a fellow-traveller’s shoulders.

Merefleet came upon her once standing in the sunshine with Mrs. Quiller’s baby in her arms. She beckoned him to speak to her. “Come here if you aren’t afraid of babies!” she said, displaying her charge. “Look at him, Big Bear! He’s three weeks old to-day. Isn’t he fine?”

“What do you know about babies?” said Merefleet, with his eyes on her lovely flushed face.

She nodded in her sprightly fashion, but her eyes were far away on the distant horizon, and her soul with them. “I know a lot, Big Bear,” she said.

Merefleet watched her, well pleased with the sight. She stood rocking to and fro. Her gaze was fixed and tender.

“I wonder what you see,” Merefleet said, after a pause.

Her eyes came back at once to her immediate surroundings.

“Shall I tell you, Big Bear?” she said.

“Yes,” said Merefleet, marvelling at the radiance of her face.

And, her voice hushed to a whisper, she moved a pace nearer to him and told him.

“Just a little baby friend of mine who lives over there,” she said. “I’m going to see him some day. I guess he’ll be glad, don’t you?”

“Who wouldn’t?” said Merefleet. “But that’s not the West, you know.”

“No,” she said simply. “He’s in the Land beyond the sea, Big Bear.” And with a strange little smile into his face, she drew the shawl closer about the child in her arms and disappeared into Quiller’s cottage.

There was something in this interview that troubled Merefleet unaccountably. But when he saw her again, her mirth was brimming over, and he thought she had forgotten.

CHAPTER IX

It was about a week after this conversation that Merefleet, invited by Seton, joined his two friends at table d’hote at their table. The suggestion came from Mab, he strongly suspected, for she seconded Seton’s proposal so vigorously that to decline would have been almost an impossibility.

“You look so lonely there,” she said. “It’s miles nicer over here. What’s your opinion?”

“I agree with you, of course,” said Merefleet, with a glance at Seton which discovered little.

“Isn’t he getting polite?” said the American girl approvingly. “Say, Bert! I guess you’ll have to take lessons in manners or he’ll get ahead of you.”

Seton smiled indulgently. He was this girl’s watch-dog and protector. He aspired to be no more.

“My dear girl, you will never make a social ornament of me as long as you live,” he said.

And Mab patted his arm affectionately.

“You’re nicer as you are, dear boy,” she said. “You aren’t smart, it’s true, but I give you the highest mark for real niceness.”

Seton’s eyes met Merefleet’s for a second. There was a touch of uneasiness about him, as if he feared Merefleet might misconstrue something. And Merefleet considerately struck a topic which he believed to be wholly impersonal.

“By the way,” he said, “I had an American paper sent me to-day. It may interest you to hear that Ralph Warrender has resigned his seat in Congress and married again.”

“What?” said Seton.

“My!” cried Mab, with a shrill laugh. “That is news, Mr. Merefleet!”

Merefleet glanced at her sharply, his attention arrested by something he did not understand. Seton pushed a glass of sherry towards her, but he was looking at Merefleet.

“News indeed!” he said deliberately. “Is it actually an accomplished fact?”

“According to the New York Herald,” said Merefleet.

Mab’s face was growing whiter and whiter. Seton still leant over the table, striving with all his resolution to force Merefleet’s attention away from her. But Merefleet would not allow it. He saw what Seton did not stop to see; and it was he, not Seton, who lifted her to her feet a moment later and half-led, half-carried her out of the stifling room.