CHAPTER XXIV 

REALITIES 

Though there was bitter frost in the ranges, it had but lightly touched the sheltered forests that shut in Bonavista. The snow seldom lay long there, and only a few wisps of it gleamed beneath the northern edge of the pines. Mrs. Acton, as usual, had gathered a number of guests about her, and Violet Hamilton sat talking with one of them in the great drawing-room one evening. The room was brilliantly lighted, and the soft radiance gleamed upon the polished parquetry floor, on which rugs of costly skins were scattered. A fire of snapping pine-logs blazed in the big English hearth, and a faint aromatic fragrance crept into the room. 

Miss Hamilton leaned back in a softly padded lounge that was obviously only made for two, and a pleasant-faced, brown-eyed young Englishman, who had no particular business in that country, but had gone there merely for amusement, sat at the other end of it, regarding her with a smile. 

"After all," he said reflectively, "I really don't think I'm very sorry the snow drove us down from our shooting camp in the ranges." 

Violet laughed. She had met the man before he went into the mountains, and he had been at Bonavista for a week or two now. 

"It was too cold for you up there?" she queried. 

"It was," answered the man, "at least, it was certainly too cold for Jardine, who came out with me. He got one of his feet nipped sitting out one night with the rifle on a high ledge in the snow, and when I left him in Vancouver the doctor told him it would be a month before he could wear a boot again." 
Was he there alone?
"After all," he said reflectively, "I really don't think I'm very sorry the snow drove us down from our shooting camp 