Once the ladies had departed, Sir George brightened visibly. He reached out eagerly for the claret and drank two glasses rapidly. Ralph declined the decanters, and also the cigar that his host handed him. He contented himself with a cigarette; he replied more or less vaguely to Sir George's idle chatter. It seemed almost incomprehensible to him that a father could sacrifice a daughter to a scoundrel like Mayfield, and accept the situation as if it had been the most natural thing in the world.

"I feel bound to have a few words with you, Sir George," he said presently. "More by accident than anything else I seem to have been dragged into your family secrets. We will not go into the reason why I was in a position to render you a service a night or two ago. It is unfortunate that that service should have proved useless, but it is more than probable than those papers will turn up again."

"Never," Sir George said emphatically. "Mayfield will take care of that. He knows that so long as he holds the papers I am quite in his power. He will lend me the money to put me right in the comfortable assurance that at the expiration of six months it will come back to him again. Take him all in all, Mayfield is perhaps the most clever scoundrel that I have ever come across, which is saying a great deal."

"You are convinced that Mayfield is a finished scoundrel, then?"

"My dear fellow, what other conclusion could I come to? His every action proves it. He has worked this thing out in the most cold-blooded way. The fellow ought to be hounded out of society and kicked out of every respectable house. No club should tolerate him. He's a rascal clean through."

There was honest indignation ringing in every word that Sir George said. Ralph listened with cynical amusement.

"And yet you are going to give your only child as a hostage to the man who has planned your social ruin," he said. "You are going to sell your daughter, and the price is to be the silence of a scoundrel! Good heavens, man, can't you realise the enormity of your crime? To save yourself from unpleasantness, you permit your daughter to give herself up to a lifetime of horror and degradation. Is this a specimen of your family pride? You are so fond of the race, so passionately attached to it, that you are paving the way for that rascal Mayfield eventually to succeed you as the head of the house! If you do this thing you will be judged for it, as sure as we are face to face at this moment. If you permit it, then you are a greater rascal by far than even Mayfield is."

Ralph's words rang out clear and true, his voice vibrated with anger. A dull flush mounted to the face of the elder man, a feeble anger filled his eyes.

"I can't permit you to speak to me like this," he protested. "I--I must be the best judge of what is right and proper for my child. And Mary is pretty certain to have her own way in the end. My good fellow, you speak as if Mary's future was in your special keeping. Anybody would think that you had fallen in love with the girl."

"I have," Ralph said calmly. "I love Mary with my whole heart and soul. I can see the beauties of her mind as clearly as I can see the beauty of her face under that crust of pride and arrogance. It will be my task to remove the husk so that the flower can be seen in all its loveliness. It may not trouble you much, it may be no particular satisfaction to you, but Mary is not going to marry Horace Mayfield. When the time comes, Mary will marry me. But I fear that there is a time of humiliation and suffering and poverty before her first, poverty in which you will have your share, Sir George. It rests practically in the girl's own hands; she can take up the sunshine of the future when she chooses."

"The fellow's mad," Sir George muttered. "Clean mad. My dear Darnley, you are talking the most abject nonsense. On your own confession you are a poor man; you have lost everything as I did by trusting to that scoundrel. I mean to Mayfield, who----"

"Precisely. We both know that man to be what he is. And in spite of what you know, you are going to let your daughter marry him and give her your blessing. Truly the family pride of which you boast is a poor thing! You are prepared to commit a crime to support it. Now tell me your honest opinion--do you suppose for a moment that Mayfield would marry Mary if she came to him empty-handed?"

Sir George shook his head; he was man of the world enough to see Ralph's point.

"I don't think he would," he said. "Mayfield is sufficient of a business man to know the value of money. Of course he's fond of ............