Thrice Armed by Harold Bindloss — Read

While Merril discussed the prospects of the pulp-mill with his companions, Anthea sat by the open window of an upper room. There was an open book on her knee, but it lay face downward, and she leaned back in a cane chair, looking out upon the Inlet across the clustering roofs of the city. The still water lay shining under the evening light, with a broad smear of smoke trailing athwart it from the steamer which had just vanished behind the dark pines that overhang The Narrows. It drifted across the tall spars of the _Agapomene_, and through it a big passenger boat's tier of deck-houses showed dimly white. Further up the Inlet another dingy cloud drifted out from behind the piles of stacked lumber about the Hastings mill, while the clatter of an Empress liner's winches came up through the clear evening air with the tolling of locomotive bells and the grind of freight-car wheels.

All this had a certain interest as well as a significance for Anthea Merril. In England the business man, as a rule, endeavors to leave his commercial affairs behind him when he turns his back on the city; but it is different in the West, where he has no privacy and his calling is his life. Mills and mines, freight rates and timber rights, are seldom debarred as topics at social functions, and Anthea had acquired a considerable knowledge of these things, though she had not lived very long in that city. It was, of course, also evident to her that her father was regarded as a man of influence and one who had a share in directing the activities of the Province, and this afforded her a certain pleasure. Several expressions overheard and facts that had lately been forced on her attention might, perhaps, have rudely dissipated that satisfaction had she not resolutely endeavored to attach a more favorable meaning to them than a good many people would have considered justifiable.