The Wings of Victory by Fred M. White

Manby Dorn had taken no heed of Sylvia's characteristic outbreak when she had discovered the trick he had played upon her. He had seen her like that before. Many a time she had written those letters of his either in sulky silence or with a wild outburst of passion, and once, indeed, she had actually threatened him with a riding whip. But nothing had come of it, and in a day or two the usual cold and distant relationship between father and daughter had been restored.

Sylvia knew him for what he was, a fact that did not disturb him in the least. Indeed, why should it, when all the world had put a proper valuation on him and treated him accordingly? There were, of course, plenty of people in the immediate neighbourhood of his own class who had known him from boyhood, and there had been a time when young Manby Dorn had been welcomed everywhere. But that time had long ceased. Men of his own class met him and passed him as if he had been a stranger; there was not a woman within miles who would have spoken to him. Not that he cared; he was long past that. So long as he could have his creature comforts and retain a certain measure of credit with his tailor, nothing mattered. And the last thing in the world he thought of was to give any consideration to the feelings of his wife and child.