The eyes of the man and the girl met, upon that, with mutual regret. Her last night! Cinderella must put off her dainty raiment and return to her saucepan-scouring, bed-making, account-keeping, making-ends-meet existence. The pang that shot through Gerald's heart was so like physical pain that he had a fanciful idea of the marble boy--the "Triumphant Love" who looked smiling down upon them--having shot his dart and reached the mark of his innermost feeling. Could he let her go? Like his father, he was a man of the world. Like his father, he had planned the alliance with birth and money which was to establish his position among English gentry. There was a sharp struggle in his mind. Had Virginia had one ounce of the coquette in her, she could have clinched the matter in five minutes. The lame man, who had watched the whole colloquy, descended the stairs behind them in time to see the perfectly appointed motor in waiting, with its two men in livery. As he turned about and reascended to enter the galleries once more, there was a bitter sneer on his mouth, a look of active malevolence, as of one who deliberately turns his back upon his better feelings. CHAPTER II FATHER AND SON "_The wise sometimes from wisdom's ways depart: Can youth then hush the dictates of the heart? Precepts of prudence curb, but can't control The fierce emotions of the flowing soul._"--Byron. The three young people, after partaking at Fuller's of an excellent tea, returned to Bryanston Square in good time to dress for dinner. As they entered the house, Mr. Rosenberg emerged from his library on the ground floor, and called to Gerald, who, thus summoned, hung up his hat and walked into the dark, cool room where his father was seated at his roll-top desk, with a letter lying before him. The elder man looked up at his only son with a kindly, half-rueful expression. "Gerald," he said, "I'm not as a rule tyrannical, and I think you will admit that I don't pry unduly into your affairs." "I do admit it, father----" "Well, if I put a question which may seem to you unwarranted, I want you to understand that there is grave reason for it. The question is this. Is there any understanding between yourself and Miss Mynors?" Gerald flushed, a slow, dark flush, as he seated himself near his father, his eyes on the ground. "No," he said quietly, "not as yet." "Ha!" The shrewd, kindly eyes above the rims of the reading-glasses were fixed upon him. "That means that you might--eh, Gerald?" The younger man did not at once reply. He seemed to be weighing carefully the thing he wished to say. At last: "I am not a fool, father," he began, "and I have ambition, or I should be no son of yours. I should prefer to make a marriage which would establish me socially." Embarrassment made his phrasing somewhat stilted. "You will remember that when I first saw Miss Mynors, she was the daughter of a man with a county position. One assumed the adequate rent-roll that went with it."