A little grim smile crept into Dane’s eyes.  “I am not.  I wouldn’t raise a finger to help you now,” he said, and retreated hastily.

It was five minutes later when Winston walked quietly into Maud Barrington’s presence, and sat down when the girl signed to him.  He wondered if she guessed how his heart was beating.

“It is very good of you to receive me, but I felt I could not slip away without acknowledging the kindness you and Miss Barrington have shown me,” he said.  “I did not know Colonel Barrington was away.”

The girl smiled a little.  “Or you would not have come?  Then we should 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?”