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Affairs were in this condition when Miss Deringham sat listening to the conversation of other visitors in the house of a friend of Mrs. Forel's one afternoon. Now and then a veiled allusion reached her, and at last she glanced inquiringly at her hostess. The lady smiled deprecatingly and shook her head. "It is really indiscreet of Helen, but she seems to believe it is true," she said.
Thus it happened that Horton's dispatches to the police at Vancouver were not the first that left the station, and that evening Deringham, who was sitting with his daughter on the verandah of Forel's house, turned from the girl with a little closing of his lips as he saw Hallam coming up the pathway.
"As you know half of it I think you had better hear it all," she said. "Well, if I had been Miss Deringham I would have taken that way of giving you back Carnaby. It is possible to raise money on an estate in the old country." There was no need of further questions, for the answer was written on Forel's flushed face, and Alton sat down with his lips firmly set.
There was no response from the man, and she now noticed that he seemed huddled together; but she saw nothing more, for just then a hand was laid upon her arm. Shaking off the grasp, she turned and saw her growing horror reflected in Forel's face. "You must come away, my dear," he said hoarsely.
Alice Deringham shivered, but she stood very straight a moment, staring down with dilated eyes at the grim figure in the chair. "Touch him. Speak to him," she said in a voice that set Forel's nerves on edge, and then as the last faint hope died away, stretched out her hands with a little half-choked cry. "Come away," said Forel very huskily.
Forel made no answer, but he fancied that his client would have been contented had she seen how Alton seemed to shake off the grim hopelessness that had been too apparent through all his resolution. It was with a lighter heart that Alton went away, and having little leisure or inclination for company, he did not go back to his friend's house until the evening of Mrs. Forel's return.
The girl turned away, for she could comprehend Forel's discomfiture, while as they followed him her father touched her. "Get Mr. Alton there on the second night, and that is all I ask," he said. It was two days later, when Alton returned to his office in a somewhat uncertain temper. He had called at Forel's house the previous evening, and been informed that Mrs.
Alton saw it all, and did not for a moment turn aside so long as the smiles and whispers were directed at him, but he stopped and waited, leaning on a chair some distance behind the spot where Forel's party were until the curtain rose again.
Pierre Huber's Les fourmis indigees, Geneve, 1861; Forel's Recherches sur les fourmis de la Suisse, Zurich, 1874, and J.T. Moggridge's Harvesting Ants and Trapdoor Spiders, London, 1873 and 1874, ought to be in the hands of every boy and girl.
I have recently been reading some of Auguste Forel's studies of ant life, and I have been profoundly impressed by the wide scope of his experimental researches, carried on for a whole lifetime.
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