“All right—­thanks!” he said.

He made his way through the group, who were too engrossed and excited to notice his desertion and went into the ball-room.  As he did so, his father entered by an opposite door, and seeing him, came round to him, and taking Stafford’s hand that hung at his side, pressed it significantly.

“I have told them!” he said.  “They are almost off their heads with delight—­you see, it’s such a big thing, even for them, Staff!  You have saved us all, my boy; but it is only I and Falconer who know it, only I who can show my gratitude!”

His voice was low and tremulous, his face flushed, like those of the men whom Stafford had just left, and his dark eyes flashing and restless.

“Where are they all?” he asked; and Stafford nodded over his shoulder towards the buffet.

Sir Stephen looked round the room with a smile of triumph, and his glance rested on Maude Falconer, standing by a marble column, her eyes downcast, her fan moving to and fro in front of her white bosom.

“She is beautiful, Staff!” he whispered.  “The loveliest woman in the room!  I am not surprised that you should have fallen in love with her.”

Stafford laughed under his breath, a strangely wild and bitter laugh, which Sir Stephen could not have failed to notice if the music had not commenced a new waltz at that moment.

Stafford went straight across the room to Maude Falconer.  She did not raise her eyes at his approach, but the colour flickered in her cheeks.

“This is our dance, I think,” he said.

She looked up with a little air of surprise, and consulted her programme.

“No; I think this is mine, Miss Falconer,” said the man at her side.

“No,” she said, calmly; “the next is yours, Lord Bannerdale; this is Mr. Orme’s.”

Though he knew she was wrong, of course Lord Bannerdale acquiesced with a bow and a smile, and Stafford led Maude away.

Wine has a trick of getting into some men’s feet and promptly giving them away; but Stafford, though he was usually one of the most moderate of men, could drink a fairly large quantity and remain as steady as a rock.  No one, watching him dance, would have known that he had drunk far too many glasses of champagne and that his head was burning, his heart thumping furiously; but though his step was as faultless as usual and he steered her dexterously through this crowd.  Maude knew by his silence, by his flushed face and restless eyes, that something had happened, and that he was under the influence of some deep emotion.  He was dancing quite perfectly, but mechanically, like a man in a dream, and though he must have heard the music, he did not hear her when she spoke to him, but looked straight before him as if he were entirely absorbed in some thought.

When they came, in the course of the dance, to one of the doors, she stopped suddenly.

“Do you mind?  It is so hot,” she murmured.