with out-stretched hands and
his name on her lips.

"Maude!" he exclaimed, startled out of his self-possession. Then it
flashed upon him that she should not be there, in his rooms, alone; and
he looked at her gravely.

"Why have you come, Maude?" he said. "Wait but one moment and I will
call a cab--go home with you."

"No," she said, presently. "Did you think I should not come, Stafford?
I have been here for hours." She drew nearer to him, her eyes, so cold
to others, burning like sapphires as they were raised to his. "Did you
think when I had heard what you had done that I should keep away? No!
I--I am proud of you--can you not guess how proud?--my heart is aching
with it. Ah, but it was like you, Stafford!"

As she put her hand on his shoulder and looked at him with a smile of
pride, and of adoration, Stafford's eyes fell before hers.

"I could do nothing else," he said. "But I am sorry you came, Maude.
Didn't Mr. Falconer tell you?"

She laughed and threw back her head with a defiant gesture.

"Yes--as if it mattered! As if anyone--even he--could separate us!
Besides, what he said was in a fit of temper, he was annoyed by your
surrendering the money. And he could not speak for me--could not
control me."

"Let me get a light," said Stafford.

"No matter," she said, as if she could not bear him to leave her side,
even for a moment. "Stafford, dearest, you will not think of, you will
forget, what he said? It was spoken in a moment of irritation. Oh, my
dearest, let me look at you--it is so long since I saw you, so long, so
long! How pale you are, and how weary looking!"

Her other arm went round his neck, and she would have drawn his face
down to her lips, but Stafford checked her.

"You should not be here," he stammered.

She laughed.

"How proud you are! Yes, and I love you for it! You think that I should
desert you, as most women would do!" She laughed again. "If you were a
pauper--"

"It is what your father called me," he said, gravely

She smiled up into his gloomy eyes defiantly, temptingly.

"What does it matter? I am rich--my father is rich--"

Stafford winced and his face flamed, but she had turned aside for a
moment and did not see the effect of her words.

--"And you have more than wealth," she laughed. "I reminded him of
that, and it sobered him. Oh, believe me! for all his pretended
stoicism, my father values a title as keenly as most men, and at heart
is anxious to see his daughter