When it vanished, she turned back into the warmth and brightness with a
little shiver and one hand tightly closed.
The great room seemed very lonely when, while the wind moaned outside,
she and her aunt sat down to dinner. Neither of them appeared
communicative, and both felt it a relief when the meal was over. Then
Maud Barrington smiled curiously as she rose and stood with hands
stretched out towards the stove.
"Aunt," she said. "Twoinette has twice asked me to go back to
Montreal, and I think I will. The prairie is very dreary in the
winter."
It was about this time when, as the whitened horses floundered through
the lee of a bluff where there was shelter from the wind, the men in
the sleigh found opportunity for speech.
"Now," said Dane quietly, "I know that we have lost you, for a while at
least. Will you ever come back, Winston?"
Winston nodded. "Yes," he said. "When time has done its work, and
Colonel Barrington asks me, if I can buy land enough to give me a
standing at Silverdale."
"That," said Dane, "will need a good many dollars, and you insisted on
flinging those you had away. How are you going to make them?"
"I don't know," said Winston simply. "Still, by some means it will be
done."
It was next day when he walked into Graham's office at Winnipeg, and
laughed when the broker who shook hands passed the cigar box across to
him.
"We had better understand each other first," he said; "You have heard
what has happened to me and will not find me a profitable customer
to-day.
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