"Sorry I'm late! Been having a talk with Mr.Stafford.Come on!" With a nod, a smile, a tender look of love and gratitude to Stafford, the brilliant adventurer, once more thrown by the buoyant wave upon the shore of safety and success, went out to communicate that success to his coadjutors.
Stafford sank into his father's chair, and with his hands thrust deep in his pockets, and his chin upon his chest, tried to clear his brain, to free his mind from all side issues, and to face the fact that he had tacitly agreed, that by his silence he had consented to marry Maude Falconer.
But, oh, how hard it was to think clearly, with the vision of that girlish face floating before him! the exquisitely beautiful face with its violet eyes now arched and merry, now soft and pleading, now tender with the tenderness of a girl's first, true, divinely trusting love.

He was looking at the book-case before him, but a mist rose between it and his eyes, and he saw the mountain-side and the darling of his heart riding down it, the sunlight on her face, the soft tendrils of hair blown rough by the wind, the red lips apart with a smile--the little grave smile which he had kissed away into deeper, still sweeter seriousness.
And he had lost her! Oh, God, how he loved her! And he had lost her forever! There was no hope for him.

He must save his father--not his father's money.

That counted for nothing--but his father's honour--his father's good name.
And even if he were not bound to make this sacrifice, to marry Maude Falconer, how could he go to Heron Hall and ask Godfrey Heron, the man of ancient lineage, of unsullied name, to give his daughter to the son of a man whose past was so black that his character was at the mercy of Ralph Falconer?
Stafford rose and stretched out his arms as if to thrust from him a weight too grievous to be borne, a cup too bitten to be drained; then his arms fell to his sides and, with a hardening of the face, a tightening of the lips which made him look strangely like his father, he left the library, and crossing the hall, made his way to the ball-room..