“Miss Radford had got a party of Indians in the store that were taking all her time to manage,” replied the man.  “Indeed, I had to chip in and help her a bit myself, for while she showed one lot scarlet flannel and coloured calicoes, the other lot were trying to help themselves to beans, tobacco, and that sort of thing.  But by the time I had punched the heads of three men, and slapped two squaws in the face, they seemed to sort of understand that good manners paid best, and acted according; then matters began to move quicker.”

Mary clasped her hands in an agony of impatience.  Would the man ever tell her, or would she be compelled to shake the information out of him?

“Did Miss Radford tell you what had happened?” she asked, with an emphatic stamp of her foot on the floor.

“Yes, Miss.  Mr. Selincourt, not knowing, ventured out on a muskeg, and was being slowly sucked in, when she and her brother came along the back creek in their boat.  It was a touch-and-go business then, for she had no planks or hurdles, though luckily she had ropes; but by sending her little brother, who weighs next to nothing at all, to slip a noose of rope under Mr. Selincourt’s shoulders, she was able to haul on the rope, and so drag him out by sheer force of arm.  She sent her love to you, and hopes he will soon be better,” the man said, with a little flourish of his hands.  In point of fact Katherine had done nothing of the kind, but it sounded better so, he thought, and gave a consolatory touch to the whole.

Mary turned abruptly away.  Her father’s misadventure was so much worse than she had expected that the horror of it broke down her self-control completely; the solid ground seemed to crumble under her feet, and if she had not sunk into the nearest chair she must have fallen.  Sitting crouched in a corner, with her hands pressed tightly against her face, striving for the mastery over those unruly emotions of hers, she failed to hear sounds of another arrival, and did not even look up when Jervis Ferrars entered, without any ceremony of knocking.

A moment he stood in silence before her, not liking to disturb her, nor even to be a witness of her breakdown, for he knew how proud she was, and the humiliation it would be to her to be watched under such conditions.  Then, seeing the door of the bedroom half-open, he passed silently and softly into the room, closing the door behind him, and Mary was alone again.  It might have been ten minutes later before he reappeared, and then the anxious look had left his face; he still looked concerned, but that was chiefly on Mary’s account.

“Miss Selincourt, I am fearfully disappointed in you,” he announced gravely, and Mary’s head came up with a jerk.

“I—­I did not know that you had come,” she faltered.

“All the more reason why you should have been brave and courageous, until there was someone on whom to shift the responsibility,” he said quietly.