“You did not tell me.  But I don’t complain, my boy,” said Sir Stephen.”  You were right to choose your own time—­young people like to keep their secret to themselves as long as possible.”

Falconer looked from one to the other with an impassive countenance.

“I feel that I am rather de trop,” he said; “that I have spoken rather prematurely; but my hand was forced, Orme.  I wanted to set your mind at rest, to show you that even if I hankered after revenge, it was impossible under the circumstances.”  He glanced at Stafford.  “It’s not the first time in history that the young people have played the part of peace-makers.  This is a kind of Romeo and Juliet business, isn’t it?  I’ll leave you and Mr. Stafford to talk it over!”

He moved to the door, but, with his hand upon it, paused and looked round at them again.

“I ought to aid that, like most modern fathers, I am entirely in the hands of my daughter.  I can’t go so far as to say, Orme, that if I had been permitted to choose, I should have chosen a son of yours for my son-in-law, but, you see, Maude doesn’t give me the option.  The young people have taken the bit between their teeth and bolted, and it seems to me that the only thing we have to do is to sit tight and look as cheerful as possible.  Oh, one word more,” he added, in a business-like tone.  “Of course I make over this concession to you, Orme; just taking the share I should have received if you had won the game and I had only stood in as proposed.  That is to say, you will be in exactly the same position as if you had won all along the line—­as you thought you had.”  And with a nod, which included father and son, he went out.

Stafford unconsciously drew back a little, so that he was almost behind Sir Stephen, who had covered his eyes with his hands and sat perfectly motionless, like a half-stunned man looking back at some terrible danger from which he had only escaped by the skin of his teeth.  Then he dropped his hands from his face and drew a long breath, the kind of breath a man draws who has been battling with the waves and finds himself on the shore, exhausted but still alive.

Stafford laid a hand on his shoulder, and Sir Stephen started and looked up at him as if he had forgotten his presence.  A flush, as if of shame, came upon the great financier’s face, and he frowned at the papers lying before him, where they had dropped from his hand.

“What an escape, Stafford!” he said, his voice still rather thick and with a tremour of excitement and even exhaustion in its usually clear and steady tone.  “I am ashamed, my boy, that you should have been a witness to my defeat:  it humiliates, mortifies me!”

“Don’t let that worry you, father,” said Stafford, scarcely knowing what he said, for the tumult in his brain, the dread at his heart.

“It is not the first defeat I have suffered in my life; like other successful men, I have known what it is to fall; and I have laughed and got up and shaken the dust off myself, so to speak, and gone at the fight again, all the harder and more determined because of the reverse.  But this—­this would have crushed me utterly and forever.”