"Where is the mine?" she asked.
"It's among the rocks some distance back from the Lake of Shadows in western Ontario."
"The Lake of Shadows!" Ethel exclaimed. "A friend I made in London used to go there with her father for fishing and shooting; but that's not important."
"Well," said Andrew, "I've talked enough about myself. There's a favor I want to ask. Will you call on Mrs. Olcott?"
Ethel started. Mrs. Olcott was young and pretty; nobody knew anything about her husband; Andrew's visits had already excited comment.
"Why should I call?" she inquired.
He gave her the best reasons he could think of for befriending the lonely woman, and she pondered them for a moment or two. Then she asked bluntly:
"How was it that Mrs. Olcott chose this neighborhood, where she knows nobody?"
"I suggested it," said Andrew, simply. "The Firs was empty, and she has few friends anywhere."
Though she had attached no importance to the remarks that had been made about him, Ethel found his unembarrassed candor reassuring. He had, however, asked her to do something that was harder than he imagined, and she hesitated.
"Very well," she said; "I will call."
"Thanks. I knew I could count on you."
They had now reached the top of the hill, and Ethel took a crossroad while Andrew mounted his bicycle, but she turned her head, and watched him ride across the moor. Andrew, however, did not look back at her, and by and by she urged her horse to a trot.
CHAPTER II
THE FAMILY PRIDE
The hall which Andrew's grandfather had built around the peel had for years been let with its shooting rights. Ghyllside, however, where Andrew lived, was a commodious house, and Leonard Hathersage was frequently glad to spend a week-end there. He and his wife had arrived on the previous evening, and he was now busy in the library while Andrew sat talking to his sisters on the terrace.
Though the light was fading, it was not yet dark, and the air was still and fragrant with flowers. Yew hedges and shrubberies were growing indistinct; a clump of firs in a neighboring meadow loomed up black and shadowy, but a band of pale saffron light still shone behind the hall on the edge of the moorland a mile away. The square peel stood out harsh and sharp against the glow, the rambling house with its tall chimneys trailing away into the gloom on its flanks.
Andrew, who had early lost his mother, had three sisters. Florence, Leonard's wife, his senior by several years, was a tall, prim and rather domineering woman; Gertrude, who had married Antony Wannop, a local gentleman, was gentler and less decided than her sister; Hilda, the youngest of all, was little, dark, and impulsive.
Wannop leaned on the terrace wall between the flower urns with a cigar in his mouth. He was stout and generally marked by a bluff geniality.
"Where did you go this afternoon, Andrew, when you wouldn't come with us to the Warringtons'?" Hilda asked.
Andrew would have preferred to evade the question, but that seemed impossible.
"I went to see Mrs. Olcott."
"Again!" exclaimed Hilda, who prided herself on being blunt.
Wannop chuckled softly, but Florence claimed Andrew's attention.
"Don't you think you have been there often enough?"
"It hasn't struck me in that light."
"Then," replied Florence, "I feel it's time it did."
"Come now!" Wannop broke in. "Three to one is hardly fair. Don't be bullied, Andrew; a bachelor can be independent."
"How do you make it three?" Hilda asked. "Only Florence and I mentioned the matter."
"I am, of course, acquainted with Gertrude's views," Wannop explained.
Hilda laughed. Antony, with his characteristic maladroitness, had somehow made things worse, and Andrew's face hardened. His sisters were generally candid with him, but they had gone too far. With a thoughtlessness he sometimes showed, he had told them nothing about his acquaintance with Clare Olcott's husband.
"You're not much of an ally," he said with a dry smile. "Anyway, as there's no reason why I shouldn't go to The Firs, I'm not likely to be deterred. I may as well mention that I met Ethel Hillyard and begged her to call."
"On Mrs. Olcott?" Florence cried. "What did she say?"
"She promised."
The astonishment of the others was obvious, but Hilda was the only one who ventured to express it.
"Andrew, you're a wonder! You haven't the least idea of scheming, and you'd spoil the best plot you took a hand in, and yet you have a funny, blundering way of getting hard things done."
"You have hinted that I was a bit of a fool," said Andrew; "but I don't see why this should be hard."
As an explanation was undesirable, Hilda let his remark pass and addressed the others.
"He has beaten us and we may as well give in gracefully. If Ethel goes, all the people who count will follow her."
"There's more in Andrew than his friends suspect," Wannop observed, laughing.
They let the subject drop, and Florence went in search of her husband.
"What's your opinion of Allinson's new policy, Andrew?" Wannop asked.
"I don't know what to think. One can be too conservative nowadays, but I'll confess that I liked the firm's old-fashioned staidness better. Even the old dingy offices somehow made you feel that the Allinsons were sober, responsible people. The new place with its brass-work, plate-glass and gilding was somewhat of a shock to me; but the business is flourishing. Mining speculation was quite out of my father's line, but Leonard makes it pay."
"I've a few thousands in the African concern," Wannop remarked with complacent satisfaction. "As it looks as if I'd get my money back in about seven years, I wish I'd put in twice as much."
Hilda let her eyes rest on the fading outline of the grim old peel.
"Well," she said, "I don't agree with Leonard's methods. They're vulgarly assertive, and the new offices strike me as being out of place. Allinson's ought to be more dignified. Even when we stole cattle from the Scots in the old days we did so in a gentlemanly way."
"Is stealing ever gentlemanly?" Wannop inquired.
"It's sometimes less mean than it is at others. Though I've no doubt that we robbed the Armstrongs and the Elliots, I can't think that we plundered our neighbors or took a bribe to shut our eyes when the Scots moss-troopers were riding up the dale. The Allinsons couldn't have betrayed the English cause, as some of the Borderers did."
"No," said Wannop, "it would certainly have been against their traditions. And in times that we know more about, nobody has ever questioned the honor of the House."
Andrew looked up with a reserved smile.
"I don't think it's likely that anybody ever will."
He got up and started toward the house.
"I must have a talk with Leonard," he said.
When he had left them, Wannop turned to the others.
"Now and then you can see the old stock in Andrew; and, after all, he has a controlling interest in the firm."
"Andrew may not do much good," Hilda declared, "but he'll do Allinson's no harm. He'll stick to the best of the old traditions." She paused with a laugh. "Perhaps we're silly in our family pride and sometimes think ourselves better than our neighbors with very little reason; but it's a clean pride. We're a mercantile family, but Allinson's has always ranked with the Bank of England."
When Andrew reached the library, his brother-in-law sat at a writing-table on which stood a tall silver lamp. The light fell in a sharply defined circle