the material value of the prize--and paramount to all the
rest, a scorn for any meanly gained advantage, however profitable. If
there was any value in his heritage of gentle blood and a sportsman's
training, it should stand him in good stead now, for the sake of the
girl he loved.

One evening in the garden Conscience asked him, "Do you think I
over-painted the somberness of the picture? But it's a shame for you to
have to endure it, too. I think the confinement is making Father more
irritable than usual."

The man shook his head and smiled whimsically.

"It's not the confinement. It's me. He's discovered that you and I have
grown up, and he's seeking to draw me into a quarrel so that he can
tender me my passports."

Conscience laid her hands on his arm and they trembled a little.

"I'm sure it isn't that," she declared, though her words were more
confident than her voice. "You've stood a great deal, but please keep it
up. It won't"--her voice dropped down the key almost to a whisper--"it
won't be for long."

* * * * *

The hills were flaming these days with autumnal splendor. Conscience and
Stuart had just returned from a drive, laden with trophies of woodland
richness and color. About the cheerless house she had distributed
branches of the sugar maple's vermilion and the oak's darker redness,
but the fieriest and the brightest clusters of leafage she had saved for
the old library where the invalid sat among his cases of old sermons.

"Stuart and I gathered these for you," she told him as she arranged them
deftly in a vase.

The old man's face did not brighten with enjoyment. Rather it hardened
into a set expression, and after a moment's pause he echoed querulously,
"You and Stuart."

His daughter looked up, her attention arrested by his tone. "Why, yes,"
she smiled. "We went for a drive and got out and foraged in the woods."

"How long has Mr. Farquaharson been here now?"

"Something over six weeks, I believe."

"Isn't it nearer two months?"

The girl turned very slowly from the window and in the dark room her
figure and profile were seen, a silhouette against the pane with a
nimbus about her hair.

"Perhaps it is. Why?"

For a while the father did not speak, then he said: "Perhaps it's time
he was thinking of terminating his visit."

The girl felt her shoulders stiffen, and all the fighting blood which
was in her as truly, if less offensively than in himself, leape