CHAPTER VI


Three weeks had passed with inconceivable rapidity, leaving Nora with
the dazed feeling that one has sometimes when waking from a fantastic
dream.

There were moments when she was overwhelmed with the utter hopelessness
of ever being able to adapt herself to a mode of life so foreign to all
her traditions. She had, she told herself, been prepared to find
everything different from life at home; and, while she had smiled--on
that day such ages ago when young Hornby had called on her at Tunbridge
Wells to announce his impending departure from the land of his birth--at
his airy theory that the life of the Canadian farmer was largely
occupied with riding, hunting, dancing and tennis, she found to her
dismay that her own mental picture of her brother's existence had been
nearly as far from the reality.

On the drive over from the station, Eddie had vaguely remarked that he
had a great surprise for her when she reached the house. Nora had paid
but little attention at the moment, thinking that he probably meant the
house itself. What had been her astonishment--when once her rage at
being lifted bodily from the sled by the man called Frank had permitted
of her feeling any other emotion--to find Reginald Hornby himself an
inmate of her brother's household. There was but little trace of the
ultra smart young Londoner, beyond his still carefully kept hair and
mustache. The only difference between his costume and that of the others