dismissed it. The surprising fact, brought before her mind so suddenly and neatly, made her feel that she had been trusting somebody who could not be trusted. He was in league with the man who had tried to hamper her movements.... She tried to tell [Pg 68]herself, of course, that there was no ground for such a thought; people can have the same lawyers without conspiring with those lawyers. But the shock of it, the coincidence of it cut the ground from under her.... This young man who had only just now taken pains to set her against Henry Gunning and his mining schemes was intimate with her lawyers, who had also taken pains to set her against Henry Gunning.... The facts seemed too pronounced to admit of coincidence.... And while she was feeling sore, rankled, the clever companion pushed the barb of suspicion a little deeper.

[Pg 68]

“How strange that you should both have the same lawyers,” she said with an air of innocent wonder. “How strange that he should know that Mr. Hard who has been so annoying to you.”

It was, of course, the attitude of Méduse Smythe to pretend that she had little or nothing to do with Heloise’s trip to Canada. She pretended all along to play a passive part. All the initiative was supposed to come from Heloise.

Méduse Smythe was clever. She had the master brain of Mr. Neuburg to prompt her, and she had played her cards subtly, so that although it was she alone who had inspired the high-minded girl to undertake this adventure, she was yet able to pose as no more than a lucky and accidental link in the chain of circumstances. Heloise thought of her only as a companion who was but faintly and sentimentally interested in an act of her employer’s[Pg 69] life over which she had no control. It was to keep up this air of being altogether outside the business that Méduse had said not that Mr. Hard was annoying to “us,” but that “Mr. Hard had been so annoying to you.”

[Pg 69]

Her attitude gave her so many advantages. Thus when Heloise said in answer to that little flick on the raw, “I wonder whether he knows Mr. Hard?” she was able to say with an admirable and impersonal air. “Well, it didn’t seem important before, but it may explain why he has monopolized you since you came on board.”

Heloise was suddenly aware how easily, how frequently she had slipped off with Clement Seadon. Had he monopolized her? Why——? She remembered how she had talked to him about Sicamous, about mining. How he had warned her.... Was that the reason? His lawyers were her lawyers ... her 

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