lad, and
the other a girl in a long white dress. What they were doing there was
no concern of his, but any trifle that diverted his attention a moment
was welcome in that time of strain, for he had felt of late that
exposure was close at hand, and was fiercely anxious to finish his work
before it came. Maud Barrington's finances must be made secure before
he left Silverdale, and he must remain at any cost until the wheat was
sold.

Then he turned slowly towards her. "It is not your aunt's confidence
that hurts me the most."

The girl looked at him steadily, the color a trifle plainer in her
face, which she would not turn from the light, and a growing wonder in
her eyes.

"Lance," she said, "we both know that it is not misplaced. Still, your
impassiveness does not please us."

Winston groaned inwardly and the swollen veins showed on his forehead.
His companion had leaned forward a little so that she could see him,
and one white shoulder almost touched his own. The perfume of her hair
was in his nostrils, and when he remembered how cold she had once been
to him, a longing that was stronger than the humiliation that came with
it grew almost overwhelming. Still, because of her very trust in him,
there was a wrong he could not do, and it dawned on him that a means of
placing himself beyond further temptation was opening to him. Maud
Barrington, he knew, would have scanty sympathy with an intrigue of the
kind Courthorne's recent adventure pointed to.

"You mean, why do I not deny what you have no doubt heard?" he said.
"What could one gain by that if you had heard the truth?"

Maud Barrington laughed softly. "Isn't the question useless?"

"No," said Winston, a trifle hoarsely now.

The girl touched his arm almost imperiously as he turned his head again.

"Lance," she said. "Men of your kind need not deal in subterfuge. The
wheat and the bridge you built speak for you."

"Still," persisted Winston, and the girl checked him with a smile.

"I fancy you are wasting time," she said. "Now, I wonder whether, when
you were in England, you ever saw a play founded on an incident in the
life of a once famous actor. At the time it rather appealed to me.
The hero, with a chivalric purpose assumed various shortcomings he had
really no sympathy with--but while there is, of course, no similarity
beyond the generous impulse, between the cases--he did not do it
clumsily. It is, however, a trifle difficult to understa