Stafford smiled rather absently; he was scarcely listening; he was so accustomed to Howard’s cynical diatribes that more often than not they made no more impression on him than water on a duck’s back.  Besides, he was thinking of Ida Heron, the girl whose strange history he had just been listening to.

There was silence for a minute or two, and while they stood leaning against the door-way two men came out of another door in the inn and stood talking.  They were commercial travellers, and they were enjoying their pipes—­of extremely strong tobacco—­after a hard day’s work.  Presently one of them said: 

“Seen that place of Sir Stephen Orme’s on the hill?  Splendacious, isn’t it?  Must have cost a small fortune.  I wonder what the old man’s game is.”

The other man shook his head, and laughed.

“Of course he’s up to some game.  He wouldn’t lay out all that money for nothing, millionaire as he is.  He’s always got something up his sleeve.  Perhaps he’s going to entertain some big swell he wants to get into his net, or some of the foreign princes he’s hand-in-glove with.  You never know what Sir Stephen Orme’s up to.  Perhaps he’s going to stand for the county; if so, he’s bound to get in.  He always succeeds, or, if he don’t, you don’t hear of his failures.  He’s the sort of man Disraeli used to write about in his novels.  One of the chaps who’d go through fire and water to get their ends; yes, and blood too, if it’s necessary.  There’s been some queer stories told about him; they say he sticks at nothing.  Look at that last Turkish concession.”

The speaker and his companion sauntered down the road.  Stafford and Howard had heard every word; but Stafford looked straight before him, and made no sign, and Howard yawned as if he had not heard a syllable.

“Do you raise any objection to my going to my little bed, Stafford?” he asked.  “I suppose, having done nothing more than clamber about a river, get wet through, and tramp a dozen miles over hills, you do not feel tired.”

“No,” said Stafford, “I don’t feel like turning in just yet.  Good-night, old man.”

When Howard had gone Stafford exchanged his dress-coat for a shooting-jacket, and with the little wallet in his pocket and his pipe in his mouth, he strode up the road.  As he said, he did not feel tired—­it was difficult for Stafford, with his athletic frame and perfect muscular system, to get tired under any circumstances—­the night was one of the loveliest he had ever seen, and it seemed wicked to waste it by going to bed, so he walked on, all unconsciously going in the direction of Heron Hall.  The remarks about his father which had fallen from the bagman, stuck to him for a time like a burr:  it isn’t pleasant to hear your father described as a kind of charlatan and trickster, and Stafford would have liked to have collared the man and knocked an apology out of him; but there are certain disadvantages attached to the position of gentlemen, and one of them is that you have to pretend to be deaf to speeches that were not intended for your ears; so Stafford could not bash the bagman for having spoken disrespectfully of the great Sir Stephen Orme.