She paused invitingly.

"Hadn't we better explain why we asked Mr. Pevensey to call?" put in Natalie quietly.

"My dear, Mr. Pevensey was just about to tell me of his people," Mrs.

Mabyn said in tones of gentle reproof.

Garth saw what the old lady would be after. "My father, Lieutenant Raymond Pevensey, was in the Navy," he said. "He was killed by a powder explosion on the gunboat _Arkadelphia_, twelve years ago."

"Dear me, how unfortunate!" murmured Mrs. Mabyn sympathetically; but it rang chillingly, and her abstracted eyes dwelt throughout upon that relentless thought of hers, whatever it was.

"I am related distantly to the Buhannons of Richmond, and the Mainwarings of Philadelphia," continued Garth, willing to humour her.

"There was a Mainwaring at Chelsea with my husband as a boy," remarked Mrs. Mabyn.

"Probably my great-uncle," he said. "In this part of the world," he went on, "there is no one who knows me beyond mere acquaintanceship, except the Bishop of Miwasa--"

"Pray say no more, Mr. Pevensey," interrupted Mrs. Mabyn. "The mere fact that the Bishop invited you to accompany him is, after all, sufficient."

She turned to the girl. "You may continue, dear Natalie."

"We read in this evening's paper," began that young lady with a directness refreshing after Mrs. Mabyn's circ.u.mlocutions; "that you were starting for Miwasa Landing to-morrow morning, to join the Bishop on his annual tour.

We wished particularly to see you before you started; and that is why I--why Mrs. Mabyn wrote."

"We thank you for coming so promptly," put in Mrs. Mabyn with her gracious air.

Garth murmured truthfully that the pleasure was his. He felt himself on the breathless verge of a discovery. Intuition warned him of what was coming; but he could not believe it yet.

"Mr. Pevensey," resumed the young lady as if with an effort; she had the humility of a proud soul who stoops to ask a favour; "we are going to make a very strange request, as from total strangers."

Mrs. Mabyn raised an agitated hand. "Wait, wait, my dear Natalie," she objected. "Perhaps after all, we had better go no further. I--I think we had better give the plan up," she said in apparently the deepest distress.

The girl turned a patient shoulder, and looked into the street again, abstractedly playing with the cord of the blind.

"It is really too much to ask of you," continued Mrs. Mabyn distressfully; "and I am so afraid for Natalie! Natalie is so very dear to me. The situation is _so_ unusual!" she wailed.

Poor Garth was sadly perplexed and exasperated by all this. The discovery he antic.i.p.ated was now apparently in retreat.

"We are glad, anyway, to have had the pleasure of making your acquaintance," said Mrs. Mabyn with an air of finality.

Suddenly it was borne in upon Garth, partly from the girl's patient att.i.tude, partly from the other's emphasis upon her distress, that it was simply, in newspaper parlance, all a bluff on the part of the older woman. Her fanatic eyes seemed to tell him that she was still bent on her object, whatever it might be. Experience had taught him that the quickest way to find out if he were right was to seem to fall in with her desire. So he promptly rose as if to leave. It worked.

Mrs. Mabyn's eyes snapped. She did not relish being taken up so quickly.

"One moment, Mr. Pevensey," she said plaintively--and hastily. "Overlook the distraction of an old woman; I am torn two ways!"

Garth understood by this that the matter was reopened; and sat down again. There was a pause, while the old lady struggled, with the air of a martyr, to regain her composure. The girl continued to look stolidly out of the window; and Garth simply waited for what was coming.

"You may continue, Natalie," said Mrs. Mabyn at length, faintly.

The girl resumed her explanation at the exact point where she left off.

"We expected--that is, we hoped you were an older man--" Garth looked so disappointed she immediately added: "For that would make the request seem less strange." She hesitated.

"What is it?" asked Garth.

But she parried awhile. "What sort of a man is the Bishop?" she asked.

Garth described his modesty and his manliness.

"A very proper person to be Bishop in a wild country," remarked Mrs.

Mabyn, patronizingly.

"And his wife?" asked Natalie.

Garth pictured a homely, una.s.suming body, with a great heart.

"Of course!" said Mrs. Mabyn. A whole chapter might be devoted to the a.n.a.lysis of the tone in which she said it.

"We had heard she accompanies her husband," said Natalie.

"Yes," said Garth.

"That simplifies matters!" exclaimed Mrs. Mabyn.

"Their route takes in Spirit River Crossing, I believe," pursued Natalie.

Garth affirmed it, wondering.

Natalie paused before she went on. "Whatever you may think of what I am going to tell you, Mr. Pevensey," she said with the same proud appeal in her voice, "we may count on you, I am sure, not to speak of it to any one for the present."

"Indeed you may!" he said warmly.

"I am obliged to get to Spirit River Crossing at the earliest possible moment," she said simply.

Through the wilderness with _her_! Garth had to wait a moment before he could trust himself to reply with becoming coolness.

"Have you considered the kind of a journey it is?" he asked quietly.

"That is the worst of it!" complained Mrs. Mabyn. "I had expected to go with her; but we find it is out of the question."

Garth hastened to a.s.sure her that it was.

"I have considered everything," said Natalie.

"But do you know that you will have to travel two or three weeks in an open boat in all weathers, a mere canoe in fact; that you will have to sleep out of doors, and live on the very roughest of fare? Could you stand it?" he demanded almost sternly.

"I am perfectly well and strong," answered Natalie.

"That is quite so, happily," said Mrs. Mabyn. "Otherwise, I would not hear of it for a moment."

"If the Bishop's wife can stand it, certainly I can," said Natalie.