Doubtless the boy would return when he had walked off his indignation. He would be sure to see the light in the study, and he would come to him for admittance. He himself would receive him with a gruff word or two of admonition and the whole affair should be dismissed. Grimly he pictured the scene to himself as, ignoring the anxiety that was growing within him, he settled himself to his lonely vigil. Slowly the night dragged on. A couple of owls were hooting to one another across the garden, and far away a dog barked at intervals. Old Sir Beverley never stirred in his chair. His limbs were rigid, his eyes fixed and watchful. But his face was grey--grey and stricken and incredibly old. He had the look of a man who carried a burden too heavy to be borne. One after another he heard the hours strike, but his position never altered, his eyes never varied, his face remained as though carved in granite--a graven image of despair. Unspeakable weariness was in his pose, and yet he did not relax or yield a hair's breadth to the body's importunity. He suffered too bitterly in the spirit that night to be aware of physical necessity. Slowly the long hours passed. The night began to wane. A faint grey glimmer, scarcely perceptible, came down from a mist-veiled sky. The wind that had sunk to stillness came softly back and wandered to and fro as though to rouse the sleeping world. Behind the mist the stars went out, and from the rookery in the park a hoarse voice suddenly proclaimed the coming day. The grey light grew. In the garden ghostly shapes arose, phantoms of the dawn that gradually resolved into familiar forms of tree and shrub. From the rookery there swelled a din of many raucous voices. The dog in the distance began to bark again with feverish zest, and from the stables came Caesar's cheery answering yell. The mist drifted away from the face of the sky. A brightness was growing there. Stiffly, painfully, Sir Beverley struggled up from his chair, stood steadying himself--a figure tragic and forlorn--with his hands against the wood of the window-frame, then with a groaning effort thrust up the sash. Violets! Violets! The haunting scent of them rose to greet him. The air was full of their magic fragrance. For a second he was aware of it; he almost winced. And then in a moment he had forgotten. He stood there motionless--a desolate old man, bowed and shrunken and grey--staring blindly out before him, unconscious of all things save the despair that had settled in his heart. The night had passed and his boy had not returned. CHAPTER XXX THE CONFLICT Stanbury Cliffs was no more than a little fishing-town at the foot of the sandy cliff--a sheltered nest of a place in which the sound of the waves was heard all day long, but which no bitter wind could reach. The peace of it was balm to Avery's spirit. She revelled in its quiet.