"I mean that even your uncle can not deny my inherited quality of gentleman. I am no millionaire incognito. I have driven racing cars and managed this factory to earn my living, having no other dependence than upon myself, but my blood is as old as yours, little girl, if that means anything." "Not to me," she cried, looking up into his eyes. "Not to me, but to him. I cared for _you_--" He drew her toward him, unresisting, their gaze still on each other. As from the first, there was no shyness between them, but the strange, exquisite understanding now made perfect. "I was right to come to you," he declared, after a time. "Right to fear that you were troubled, conscientious lady. But I must go back, or there will be a fine disturbance at the Beach. And I have shattered my other plans to insignificant fragments, or you have. If I did not forget by moonlight that you were Emily Ffrench, I certainly forgot everything else." She looked up at him, her softly tinted face bright as his own, her yellow hair rumpled into flossy tendrils under the black velvet ribbon binding it. "Everything else?" she echoed. "Is there anything else but this?" "Nothing that counts, to me. You for my own, and this good world to live in--I stand bareheaded before it all. But yet, I told you once that I had a purpose to accomplish; a purpose now very near completion. In a few months I meant to leave Ffrenchwood." Emily gave a faint cry. "Yes, for my work would have been done. Then I fell in love and upset everything. When I tell Mr. Ffrench that I want you, I will have to leave at once." "Why? You said--" "How brave are you, Emily?" he asked. "I said your uncle could not question my name or birth, but I did not say he would want to give you to me. Nor will he; unless I am mistaken. Are you going to be brave enough to come to me, knowing he has no right to complain, since you and I together have given him Dick?" "He does not know you; how can you tell he does not like you?" she urged. "Do you think he likes 'Darling' Lestrange of the race course?" The sudden keen demand disconcerted her. "I hear a little down there," he added. "I have not been fortunate with your kinsman. No, it is for you to say whether Ethan Ffrench's unjust caprice is a bar between us. To me it is none." "I thought there was to be no more trouble," she faltered, distressed. Lestrange looked down at her steadily, his gray eyes darkening to an expression she had never seen. "Have I no right?" was his question. "Is there no cancelling of a claim, is there no subsequent freedom? Is it all no use, Emily?" Vaguely awed and frightened, her fingers tightened on his arm in a panic of surrender. "I will come to you, I will come! You know best what is right--I trust you to tell me. Forgive me, dear, I wanted to--" He silenced her, all the light flashing back to his face.