He had passed other unpleasant moments of that kind since he came to Silverdale, and long afterwards the memory of them brought a flush to his face.

The excuses he had made seemed worthless when he strove to view what he had done, and was doing, through those women's eyes.
It was dusk when he returned to the homestead, worn, out in body but more tranquil in mind, and stopped a moment in the doorway to look back on the darkening sweep of the plowing.

He felt with no misgivings that his time of triumph would come, and in the meanwhile the handling of this great farm with all the aids that money could buy him was a keen joy to him; but each time he met Maud Barrington's eyes he realized the more surely that the hour of his success must also see accomplished an act of abnegation, which he wondered with a growing fear whether he could find the strength for.

Then as he went in a man who cooked for his hired assistants came to meet him.
"There's a stranger inside waiting for you," he said.

"Wouldn't tell me what he wanted, but sat right down as if the place was his, and helped himself without asking to your cigars.