have had no opportunity of congratulating you on your triumphant
acquittal. You see, it must be mentioned."

"I'm afraid there was a miscarriage of justice," said Winston quietly.
"Still, though it is a difficult subject, the deposition of the man I
supplanted went a long way, and the police did not seem desirous of
pressing a charge against me. Perhaps I should have insisted on
implicating myself, but you would scarcely have looked for that after
what you now know of me."

Maud Barrington braced herself for an effort, though she was outwardly
very calm. "No," she said, "no one would have looked for it from any
man placed as you were, and you are purposing to do more than is
required of you. Why will you go away?"

"I am a poor man," said Winston. "One must have means to live at
Silverdale!"

"Then," said the girl with a soft laugh which cost her a good deal, "it
is because you prefer poverty, and you have at least one opportunity at
Silverdale. Courthorne's land was mine to all intents and purposes
before it was his, and now it reverts to me. I owe him nothing, and he
did not give it me. Will you stay and farm it on whatever arrangement
Dane and Macdonald may consider equitable? My uncle's hands are too
full for him to attempt it."

"No," said Winston, and his voice trembled a little. "Your friends
would resent it."

"Then," said the girl, "why have they urged you to stay?"

"A generous impulse. They would repent of it by and by. I am not one
of them, and they know it, now, as I did at the beginning. No doubt
they would be courteous, but you see a half-contemptuous toleration
would gall me."

There was a little smile on Maud Barrington's lips, but it was not in
keeping with the tinge in her cheek and the flash in her eyes.

"I once told you that you were poor at subterfuge, and you know you are
wronging them," she said. "You also know that even if they were
hostile to you, you could stay and compel them to acknowledge you. I
fancy you once admitted as much to me. What has become of the pride of
the democracy you showed me?"

Winston made a deprecatory gesture. "You must have laughed at me. I
had not been long at Silverdale then," he said dryly. "I should feel
very lonely now. One man against long generations. Wouldn't it be a
trifle unequal?"

Maud Barrington smiled again. "I did not laugh, and this is not
England, though what you consider prejudices do not count for so much
as the