The Greater Power by Harold Bindloss — Read

There was bright sunshine at Bonavista when Nasmyth, who had been told at the station that Acton had arrived from Victoria the day before, limped out from the shadow of the surrounding Bush, and stood still a moment or two, glancing across the trim lawn and terrace towards the wooden house. The spacious dwelling, gay with its brightly painted lattice shutters, dainty scroll-work, and colonnades of wooden pillars, rose against the sombre woods, and he wondered with some anxiety whether Mrs. Acton had many guests in it. He had no desire to fall in with any strangers, for he was worn out and aching, and he still wore the old duck clothing in which he had left the canyon. It might, he fancied, be possible to slip into the house and change before he presented himself to Mrs. Acton, though he was by no means sure that the garments in the valise he carried in his hand were dry.

He could see nobody on the terrace, and moved forward hastily until he stopped in consternation as he crossed one of the verandas. The sunlight streamed in, and Mrs. Acton and Violet Hamilton sat upon the seat which ran along the back of it. The girl started when she saw him, and Nasmyth stood looking down on her, worn in face and heavy-eyed, with his workman's garb clinging, tight and mire-stained, about his limbs. There was, however, a certain grimness in his smile. He had seen the girl's start and her momentary shrinking, and it occurred to him that there was a significance in the fact that it had not greatly hurt him.