Donald rode slowly back to camp. Connie’s distress had touched his heart; her heart-breaking sobs were still ringing in his ears. “It is not that Wainwright does not love his daughter,” mused Donald. “It must be that he is very poor.
“Don’t see how I can help,” his thoughts ran on. “One can’t very well suggest to a father that he buy clothes for his child.”
Andy rang the lunch-bell, and there was a wild but good-natured scramble for the tables.
A long table had been arranged in the big dining-room for the officials and Janet’s party to which Donald had invited Mr. Wainwright.
“Did you find Connie?” queried Wainwright.
“No,” lied Donald, “I couldn’t find her.”
Janet’s friends were having a merry time. There was laughter, jesting and gay repartee from all sides. Douglas was in his element, his quips and brilliant sallies keeping the diners in a continual uproar.
As Donald glanced around the big table at the laughing faces of the gay party, he tried to visualize Connie dressed as one of these fashionably-clad girls who represented Vancouver’s “younger set.” The vision he conjured caused him to smile dreamily.
Janet had manœuvred to secure a seat beside Donald. In spite of all her artful contriving, she had been unable to have more than a few words with her father’s busy general superintendent since her arrival. She noticed the dreamy smile on his face and wondered what could be the cause.
“You seem rather distraught,” she said with an arch smile, her dark eyes fixed on his face. “Aren’t you enjoying yourself?”
“You were gone for some time this morning,” she stated.
“Yes,” he concurred, “I went up to bring Connie.”
Janet’s fine eyebrows lifted slightly, and she looked at Donald with a curious intentness. “Why didn’t she come?”
Her woman’s intuition long ago had told her that the “wood-sprite”—as Donald called Connie—was madly in love with him. As she looked at him now and noticed his pre-occupied air, a pang of jealousy shot through her heart like an arrow. Was it possible that he had begun to realise that the wild girl of the woods was not a child, and that a love for her had been kindled in his heart? The thought made her feel faint and she tried to put it from her mind.
Lunch was finished now and they were walking back to the lake. Douglas invited the party to take a trip around the lake in a motor-boat, to which they assented gleefully.