Lady Merton would soon, it seemed, be ready for anything that Winnipeg might have to show her.
The new-comer had time, however, to realise and enjoy a pleasant expectancy before she appeared.

He was apparently occupied with the _Times_, but in reality he was very conscious all the time of his own affairs and of a certain crisis to which, in his own belief, he had now brought them.

In the first place, he could not get over his astonishment at finding himself where he was.

The very aspect of the Winnipeg hotel, as he looked curiously round it, seemed to prove to him both the seriousness of certain plans and intentions of his own, and the unusual decision with which he had been pursuing them.
For undoubtedly, of his own accord, and for mere travellers' reasons, he would not at this moment be travelling in Canada.

The old world was enough for him; and neither in the States nor in Canada had he so far seen anything which would of itself have drawn him away from his Cumberland house, his classical library, his pets, his friends and correspondents, his old servants and all the other items in a comely and dignified way of life.
He was just forty and unmarried, a man of old family, easy disposition, and classical tastes.