She was dancing with Lord Fitzharford.

There was not a touch of colour in her face, her lips were pensive, her lids lowered; she looked like an exquisite statue, exquisitely clothed, moving with the exquisite poetry of motion, but quite devoid of feeling.

Suddenly, as if she felt his presence, she raised her eyes and looked at him.

A light shot into them, glowed for a moment, her lips curved with the faintest of smiles, and a warm tint stole to her face.
It was an eloquent look, one that could not be mistaken by the least vain of men, and it went straight through Stafford's heart; for it forced him to realise that which he had not even yet quite realised--that he had tacitly pledged himself to her.

Under other circumstances, the thought might have set his heart beating and sent the blood coursing hotly through his veins; but with his heart aching with love for Ida, and despair at the loss of her, Maude Falconer's love-glance only chilled him and made him shudder with apprehension of the future, with the thought of the cost of the sacrifice which he had taken upon himself.