"I can at least be honest with you in this venture," he said with a curious quietness.
Nothing further was said, but when his guests drove away Winston sat still a while and then went back very grim in face to his plowing. He had passed other unpleasant moments of that kind since he came to Silverdale, and long afterwards the memory of them brought a flush to his face. The excuses he had made seemed worthless when he strove to view what he had done, and was doing, through those women's eyes.
It was dusk when he returned to the homestead, worn, out in body but more tranquil in mind, and stopped a moment in the doorway to look back on the darkening sweep of the plowing. He felt with no misgivings that his time of triumph would come, and in the meanwhile the handling of this great farm with all the aids that money could buy him was a keen joy to him; but each time he met Maud Barrington's eyes he realized the more surely that the hour of his success must also see accomplished an act of abnegation, which he wondered with a growing fear whether he could find the strength for. Then as he went in a man who cooked for his hired assistants came to meet him.
"There's a stranger inside waiting for you," he said. "Wouldn't tell me what he wanted, but sat right down as if the place was his, and helped himself without asking to your cigars. Wanted something to drink, too, and smiled at me kind of wicked when I brought him the cider."
The room was almost dark when Winston entered it, and stood still a moment staring at a man who sat, cigar in hand, quietly watching him. His appearance was curiously familiar, but Winston could not see his face until he moved forward another step or two. Then he stopped once more, and the two saying nothing looked at one another. It was Winston who spoke first, and his voice was very even.
"What do you want here?" he asked.
The other man laughed. "Isn't that a curious question when the place is mine? You don't seem overjoyed to see me come to life again."
Winston sat down and slowly lighted a cigar. "We need not go into that. I asked you what you want."
"Well," said Courthorne dryly, "it is not a great ideal. Only the means to live in a manner more befitting a gentleman than I have been able to do lately."
"You have not been prospering?" and Winston favored his companion with a slow scrutiny.