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In another five minutes he had rejoined his daughter, looking more like the man who urbanely presided over the not always contented shareholders' meetings. He realized, however, that he had a slightly difficult task before him. "You seem to take the news rather badly, father," said the girl. Deringham smiled deprecatingly. "I have not been quite so well lately, and it upset me a trifle," said he.
She fancied he could be remorseless in a reckoning, and she had now and then of late had unpleasant suspicions respecting Deringham's intentions concerning him. Alton took up the paddle, and the pair found Deringham waiting them when they landed.
Miss Deringham busied herself with a spirit lamp, and Alton watched her with a little glint in his eyes. Possibly the girl knew that her movements were graceful as she bent over the lamp, and that the light from the one above her struck a fine sparkle from her hair.
"And now I have a good deal to do," he said. Alice Deringham also rose with a little stateliness, and when he had gone out sank down contemplatively into the chair again. Her hands lay open in her lap, and it is possible that she saw nothing of the sewing they rested on as she grappled with the question why had the man told her what he had done.
Deringham in his tweed travelling attire, which, worn with apparent carelessness, seemed to hang with every fold just where it should be, was wholly at his ease, and there was a trace of half-expressed toleration in his thin, finely-cut face, while Hallam appeared to become coarse and embarrassed by comparison.
Alton, who dared not look at her, now bent his head. "You are very kind still, it can't be helped," he said. "I think Mrs. Forel is coming back for you. Somebody is going to sing." Their hostess approached the doorway, and Alice Deringham found words fail her as she watched the man, though she knew that the silence was horribly eloquent. It was Alton who broke it. "You had better go in.
Deringham appeared to consider, because the motives which influenced him were ones he could not well reveal. "We are his only relatives in this country and there is the look of the thing," he said. The girl moved a little, and her father watching her noticed her fine symmetry, and how her red-gold hair gleamed against the white panelling.
Alice Deringham understood him because she was a somewhat intellectual young woman, though she had, and possibly fortunately, but seldom been required to decide between inclination and duty in any affair of importance hitherto. There was also something that touched her in the man's simple faithfulness. "And you are going to do a good deal?" she said. "I don't know," said Alton gravely.
During her intercourse with rancher Alton, Alice Deringham had experienced the sensation. "You have been working too hard lately, and worrying, too, I think," she said. Alton laughed a little, and then glanced at the stove for a while in silence, as though communing with himself. When he looked up again the girl fancied that he had decided something. "Work hurts nobody.
Supper was served with as much ceremony as was possible at Somasco, but the meal was a somewhat silent one. The ranchers were a trifle anxious while the surveyor spoke most to Alice Deringham, who sat next him near the head of the table, and the member of the Government divided his observations between the wife of a big axeman and Mrs. Forel.
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