CHAPTER XVIII.

"Ida!"

It was the lover's cry of appeal, the prayer for love uttered by the heart that loves; and it went straight to her own heart.

She put out her hand, and he took it and held it in both his.

"I have come for your answer," he said in the low voice that thrills; the voice which says so much more than the mere words. "I could not wait--I tried to keep away from you until to-morrow; but it was of no use. I am here, you see, and I want your answer. Don't tell me it is 'No!' Trust me, Ida--trust to my love for you. I will devote my life to trying to make you happy. Ah, but you know! What is your answer? Have you thought--you promised me you would think?"

"I have thought," she said, at last. "I have thought of nothing else--I wanted to tell you the truth--to tell you truly as I would to myself--but it is so hard to know--Sometimes when I think that you may go away, and that I may not see you again, my heart sinks, and I feel, oh! so wretched."

He waited for no more, but caught her to him, and as she lay in his arms only slightly struggling, her face upturned, he bent his own, almost white with pa.s.sion, and kissed her on the lips, and not once only.

The blood rushed to her face, her bosom rose and fell, and, her face grown pale again, her eyes gazed up into his half fiercely, half appealingly; then suddenly they grew moist, as if with tears, her lips quivered, and from them came, as if involuntarily, the words of surrender, the maiden confession:

"I love you!"

He uttered a low, sharp cry, the expression of his heart's delight, his soul's triumph.

"You love me! Ida! How--how do you know--when?" She shook her head and sighed, as she pressed her cheek against his breast.

"I don't know. It was just now--the moment when you kissed me. Then it came to me suddenly--the knowledge--the truth. It was as if a flash of light had revealed it to me. Oh, yes, I love you. I wish--almost I wish that I did not, for--it hurts me!"

She pressed her hand to her heart, and gazed up at him with the wonder of a child who is meeting its first experience of the strange commingling of pain and joy.

He raised her in his arms until her face was against his.

"I know--dearest," he said, almost in a whisper. "It is love--it is always so, I think. My heart is aching with longing for you, and yet I am happy--my G.o.d, how happy! And you? Tell me, Ida?"

"Yes, I am happy," she breathed, with a deep sigh, as she nestled still closer to him. "It is all so strange--so unreal!"

"Not unreal, dearest," he said, as they walked under the trees, her head against his shoulder, his arm round her waist and supporting her.

"It is real enough, this love of mine--which will last me till my death, I know; and yours?"

She gazed straight before her dreamily.

"There can be no heaven without you, without your love," she answered, with a solemn note in her sweet voice.

He pressed her to him.

"And you have thought it all out. You have realised that you will be my wife--my very own?"

"Yes," she said. "I know now. I know that I am giving you myself, that I am placing all my life in your hands."

"G.o.d help me to guard it and make it happy!" he said; then he laughed.

"I have no fear! I will make you happy, Ida! I--I feel that I shall. Do you understand what I mean? I feel as if I had been set apart, chosen from all the millions of men, to love you and cherish you and make you happy! And you, Ida?"

She looked up at him with the same far-away, dreamy expression in her wonderful eyes.

"Now at this moment I felt that I, too, have been set apart for you: is it because you have just said the same? No, because I felt it when you kissed me just now. Ah, I am glad you did it! If you had not I might not have known that I loved you, I might have let you go forever, thinking that I did not care. It was your kiss that opened my heart to me and showed me--."

He bent over her until his lips nearly touched hers. "Kiss me in return--of your own accord, Ida! But once, if you will; but kiss me!"

Without a blush, solemnly as if it were a sacrament, she raised her head and kissed him on the lips.

There fell a silence. The world around them, in the soft shimmer of the crescent moon, became an enchanted region, the land that never was on earth or sea, the land of love, in which all that dwell therein move in the glamour of the sacred Fire of Love.

Stafford broke it at last. It is the man who cannot be contented with silence; he thirsts for his mistress's voice.

"Dearest, what shall I do? You must tell me," he said, as if he had been thinking. "I will do whatever you wish, whatever you think best.

I've a strong suspicion that you're the cleverest of us; that you've got more brains in this sweet little finger of yours than I've got in my clumsy head--"

She laughed softly and looked at the head which he had libelled, the shapely head with its close-cut hair, which, sliding her hand up, she touched caressingly.

"Shall I come to your father to-morrow, Ida? I will ride over after breakfast--before, if you like: if I had my way I'd patrol up and down here all night until it was a decent time to call upon him."

She nestled a little closer to him, and her brows came level with sudden gravity and doubt.

"My father! I had not thought of him--of what he would say--do. But I know! He--he will be very angry," she said, in a low voice.

"Will he? Why?" Stafford asked. "Of course I know I'm not worthy of you, Ida; no living man is!"

"Not worthy!"

She smiled at him with the woman's worship already dawning in her deep grey eyes.

"It is I who am not worthy. Why, think! I am only an inexperienced girl--living the life of a farmer's daughter. We are very poor--oh, you do not know how poor! We are almost as poor as the smallest tenant, though we live in this big house, and are still regarded as great people--the Herons of Herondale."

"That's one of the things I have been thinking of," said Stafford.

"What lovely hair you have, Ida! It is not often that dark hair is so soft, is it?"

He bent down and drew a look, which his caresses had released, across her lips, and kissed her through it.

"You are lords of the soil, people of importance and rank here, while we are--well, just ordinary folk. I can quite understand your father objecting. Dearest, you are worthy of a duke, a prince--"

She put her hand up to his lips to silence the lover's extravagant flattery.

"It is not that--the difference--which is all to your advantage," she said. "My father may think of it," she went on with innocent candour.

"But it would be the same if you were of the highest rank. He does not want me to leave him."

"And if he were less anxious to keep you he would not give you to me, who am, in his opinion, and rightly, so much your inferior," said Stafford. "But I ought to go to him, dearest. I ought to go to-morrow."

She trembled a little as she nestled against him. "And--and--your father, Sir Stephen Orme?" she said. "What will he say?"

Stafford laughed slowly and confidently.