She flushed at the sight, and became suddenly nervous, acutely conscious, too, of her poor, shabby clothes, old-fashioned and ill cut, as contrasted with the picturesque house gown in which Mary was garbed, a soft grey woollen, which, though simple enough to have been worn upon any occasion, yet suggested London or Paris in every line.
"You are Miss Radford, I think," said Mary in that quiet, cultured voice which somehow matched, or at least harmonized, with her gown, "and I have come to say 'Thank you' for your goodness to my dear father." "Oh, but really it was not I who saved him, but Phil! I should have been too heavy to walk three steps across that muskeg without sticking fast," Katherine answered, with a low, nervous laugh.
But Mary was not to be put off in this fashion, and she went on, her voice fluttering a little because of the emotion she was keeping down with a resolute hand: "I know it was your brother who went out on the swamp and put the rope round my father, but I also know that it was really you who planned the rescue and pulled my father out.

I cannot speak of it all as I would wish, and words are too faint and poor to express all I feel; but from my heart I am grateful, and all my life I shall be in your debt." A sob came up in Katherine's throat, and her heart fluttered wildly, for she was thinking of that dark secret from the past which her father had told her about, and she was wondering if the work of to-day would in any sense help to wipe off that old score of wrongdoing which stood to her father's account.
"It is only one's duty to help those who are in difficulties," she said, when she could manage her voice, and still that curious fluttering in her throat.

"I hope Mr.Selincourt is not much the worse for his accident.

I was afraid that he was terribly shaken.
He must have suffered such fearful agony of mind during the time he was being sucked down." "He is sleeping now, peacefully as an infant.

Mr.Ferrars, who is with him, says that his pulse is steady and his heart quiet, so it really looks as if the after effects may not be very bad," Mary answered.