It was some little time later when Miss Barrington came in and, after a glance at Winston, kissed her niece.  Then she turned to the man.  “My brother is asking for you,” she said.  “Will you come up with me?”

Winston followed her, and hid his astonishment when he found Colonel Barrington lying in a big chair.  His face was haggard and pale, his form seemed to have grown limp and fragile, and the hand he held out trembled.

“Lance,” he said, “I am very pleased to have you home again.  I hear you have done wonders in the city, but you are, I think, the first of your family who could ever make money.  I have, as you will see, not been well lately.”

“I am relieved to find you better than I expected, sir,” said Winston quietly.  “Still, I fancy you are forgetting what I told you the night I went away.”

Barrington nodded, and then made a little impatient gesture.  “There was something unpleasant, but my memory seems to be going, and my sister has forgiven you.  I know you did a good deal for us at Silverdale, and showed yourself a match for the best of them in the city.  That pleases me.  By and by, you will take hold here after me.”

Winston glanced at Miss Barrington, who smiled somewhat sadly.

“I am glad you mentioned that, sir, because I purpose staying at Silverdale now,” he said.  “It leads up to what I have to ask you.”

Barrington’s perceptions seemed to grow clearer, and he asked a few pertinent questions before he nodded approbation.

“Yes,” he said, “she is a good girl—­a very good girl, and it would be a suitable match.  I should like somebody to send for her.”

Maud Barrington came in softly, with a little glow in her eyes and a flush on her face, and Barrington smiled at her.

“My dear, I am very pleased, and I wish you every happiness,” he said.  “Once I would scarcely have trusted you to Lance, but he will forgive me, and has shown me that I was wrong.  You and he will make Silverdale famous, and it is comforting to know, now my rest is very near, that you have chosen a man of your own station to follow me.  With all our faults and blunders, blood is bound to tell.”

Winston saw that Miss Barrington’s eyes were a trifle misty, and he felt his face grow hot, but the girl’s fingers touched his arm, and he followed, when, while her aunt signed approbation, she led him away.  Then when they stood outside she laid her hands upon his face and drew it down to her.

“You will forget it, dear, and he is still wrong.  If you had been Lance Courthorne I should never have done this,” she said.

“No,” said the man gravely.  “I think there are many ways in which he is right, but you can be content with Winston the prairie farmer?”

Maud Barrington drew closer to him with a little smile in her eyes.  “Yes,” she said simply.  “There never was a Courthorne who could stand beside him.”