The obvious inference was that the prodigal had been reclaimed by the simple means of putting him on his honor, but that did not for a moment suggest itself to the girl.  She had often regretted her own disbelief and once more felt the need for reparation.

“Lance,” she said, very quietly, “my aunt was wiser than I was, but she was mistaken.  What she gave you out of her wide charity was already yours by right.”

That was complete and final, for Maud Barrington did nothing by half, and Winston recognized that she held him blameless in the past, which she could not know, as well as in the present, which was visible to her.  Her confidence stung him as a whip, and when in place of answering he looked away, the girl fancied that a smothered groan escaped him.  She waited, curiously expectant, but he did not speak, and just then the fall of hoofs rose from behind the birches in the bluff.  Then a man’s voice came through it singing a little French song, and Maud Barrington glanced at her companion.

“Lance,” she said, “how long is it since you sang that song?”

“Well,” said Winston, doggedly conscious of what he was doing, “I do not know a word of it, and never heard it in my life.”

Maud Barrington stared at him.  “Think,” she said.  “It seems ever so long ago, but you cannot have forgotten.  Surely you remember Madame Aubert, who taught me to prattle in French, and the day you slipped into the music-room and picked up the song, while she tried in vain to teach it me.  Can’t you recollect how I cried, when you sang it in the billiard-room, and Uncle Geoffrey gave you the half-sovereign which had been promised to me?”

“No,” said Winston, a trifle hoarsely, and with his head turned from her watched the trail.

A man in embroidered deerskin jacket was riding into the moonlight, and though the little song had ceased, and the wide hat hid his face, there was an almost insolent gracefulness in his carriage that seemed familiar to Winston.  It was not the abandon of the swashbuckler stock-rider from across the frontier, but something more finished and distinguished that suggested the bygone cavalier.  Maud Barrington, it was evident, also noticed it.

“Geoffrey Courthorne rode as that man does,” she said.  “I remember hearing my mother once tell him that he had been born too late, because his attributes and tastes would have fitted him to follow Prince Rupert.”

Winston made no answer, and the man rode on until he drew bridle in front of them.  Then he swung his hat off, and while the moonlight shone into his face looked down with a little ironical smile at the man and woman standing beside the horse.  Winston closed one hand a trifle, and slowly straightened himself, feeling that there was need of all his self-control, for he saw his companion glance at him, and then almost too steadily at Lance Courthorne.

The latter said nothing for a space of seconds, for which Winston hated him, and yet in the tension of the suspense he noticed that the signs of indulgence he had seen on the last occasion were plainer in Courthorne’s face.  The little bitter smile upon his lips was also not quite in keeping with the restlessness of his fingers upon the bridle.