And he had lost her!  Oh, God, how he loved her!  And he had lost her forever!  There was no hope for him.  He must save his father—­not his father’s money.  That counted for nothing—­but his father’s honour—­his father’s good name.

And even if he were not bound to make this sacrifice, to marry Maude Falconer, how could he go to Heron Hall and ask Godfrey Heron, the man of ancient lineage, of unsullied name, to give his daughter to the son of a man whose past was so black that his character was at the mercy of Ralph Falconer?  Stafford rose and stretched out his arms as if to thrust from him a weight too grievous to be borne, a cup too bitten to be drained; then his arms fell to his sides and, with a hardening of the face, a tightening of the lips which made him look strangely like his father, he left the library, and crossing the hall, made his way to the ball-room.

CHAPTER XXIII.

The ball was at its height.  Even the coldest and most blase of the guests had warmed up and caught fire at the blaze of excitement and enjoyment.  The ball-room was dazzling in the beauty of its decorations and the soft effulgence of the shaded electric light, in which the magnificent jewels of the titled and wealthy women seemed to glow with a subdued and chastened fire.  A dance was in progress, and Stafford, as he stood by the doorway and looked mechanically and dully at the whirling crowd, the kaleidoscope of colour formed by the rich dresses, the fluttering fans, and the dashes of black represented by the men’s clothes, thought vaguely that he had never seen anything more magnificent, more elegant of wealth and success.  But through it all, weird and ghost-like shone Ida’s girlish face, with its love-lit eyes and sweetly curving lips.

He looked round, and presently he saw Maude Falconer in her strange and striking dress.  She was dancing with Lord Fitzharford.  There was not a touch of colour in her face, her lips were pensive, her lids lowered; she looked like an exquisite statue, exquisitely clothed, moving with the exquisite poetry of motion, but quite devoid of feeling.  Suddenly, as if she felt his presence, she raised her eyes and looked at him.  A light shot into them, glowed for a moment, her lips curved with the faintest of smiles, and a warm tint stole to her face.

It was an eloquent look, one that could not be mistaken by the least vain of men, and it went straight through Stafford’s heart; for it forced him to realise that which he had not even yet quite realised—­that he had tacitly pledged himself to her.  Under other circumstances, the thought might have set his heart beating and sent the blood coursing hotly through his veins; but with his heart aching with love for Ida, and despair at the loss of her, Maude Falconer’s love-glance only chilled him and made him shudder with apprehension of the future, with the thought of the cost of the sacrifice which he had taken upon himself.  The music sounded like a funeral march in his ears, the glitter, the heat, the movement, seemed unendurable; and he threaded his way round the room to an ante-room which had been fitted up as a buffet.