"She's--ah--downstairs, I think," said the tall young man, puffing vigorously. "I came up--er--to see you about Jane, Mr. Cable. I have asked her to be my wife, sir." For a full minute the keen eyes of the older man, sharpened by strife and experience, looked straight into the earnest grey eyes of the young man who now stood across the room with his hand on the mantlepiece. Cable's cigar was held poised in his fingers, halfway to his lips. Graydon Bansemer felt that the man aged a year in that brief moment. "You know, Graydon, I love Jane myself," said Cable at last, arising slowly. His voice shook. "I know, Mr. Cable. She is everything to you. And yet I have come to ask you to give her to me." "It isn't that I have not suspected--aye, known--what the outcome would be," said the other mechanically. "She will marry, I know. It is right that she should. It is right that she should marry you, my boy. You--you DO love her?" He asked the question almost fiercely. "With all my soul, Mr. Cable. She loves me. I don't know how to convince you that my whole life will be given to her happiness. I am sure I can---" "I know. It's all right, my boy. It--it costs a good deal to let her go, but I'd rather give her to you than to any man I've ever known. I believe in you." "Thank you, Mr. Cable," said Graydon Bansemer. Two strong hands clasped each other and there was no mistaking the integrity of the grasp. "But this is a matter in which Jane's mother is far more deeply concerned than I," added the older man. "She likes you, my boy--I know that to be true, but we must both abide by her wishes. If she has not retired..." "Jane is with her, Mr. Cable. She knows by this time." "She is coming." Mrs. Cable's light footsteps were heard crossing the hall, and an instant later Bansemer was holding open the den door for her to enter. He had a fleeting glimpse of Jane as that tall young woman turned down the stairway. Frances Cable's face was white and drawn, and her eyes were wet. Her husband started forward as she extended her hand to him. He clasped them in his own and looked down into her face with the deepest tenderness and wistfulness in his own. Her body swayed suddenly and his expression changed to one of surprise and alarm. "Don't--don't mind, dear," he said hoarsely. "It had to come. Sit down, do. There! Good Lord, Frances, if you cry now I'll--I'll go all to smash!" He sat down abruptly on the arm of the big leather chair into which she had sunk limply. Something seemed to choke him and his fingers went nervously to his collar. Before them stood the straight, strong figure of the man who was to have Jane forever. Neither of them--nor Jane--knew what Frances Cable had suffered during the last hour. She accidentally had heard the words which passed between the lovers in the den downstairs. She was prepared when Jane came to her with the news later on, but that preparation had cost her more than any of them ever could know.