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Just for one moment Lady Stanmere faltered. She stood in the great hall with the dead and gone Stanmeres looking down upon her, soldiers and statesmen and clerics that Lely and Van Dyck and Reynolds and Romney had painted. There had been terribly wild blood in many of them, but no disgrace. It would have been easier to have faced the shade of any of them there than meet the degenerate man now waiting in the library.
Lady Stanmere stood there with her hand pressed to her heart, and a dryness in her throat. At any cost this disgrace must be averted. Stephen Gay had left home with the shadow of crime upon him, and he had never been back till to-night. What his record had been in the meantime, Lady Stanmere did not dare to think.