you shall not swear to me, Stafford. I--I will believe you love me as I shall love you forever and forever! But if--if the time should come when some other girl shall win you from me, promise me that you will not tell me, that you will just keep away from me! I could bear it if--if I did not see you; but if I saw you--Oh!"--something like a moan escaped her quivering lips, and she flung herself upon his breast with the _abandon_, the unself-consciousness of a child.

Stafford was moved to his inmost heart, and for a moment, as he held her within the embrace of his strong arms, he could not command his voice sufficiently for speech. At last he murmured, his lips seeking hers:

"Ida! I swear that I will love you forever and forever!"

"But--but--if you break your vow, you promise that you will not come to me--tell me? I shall know. Promise, ah, promise!"

"Will nothing less content you? Must I?" he said, almost desperate at her persistence. "Then I promise, Ida!"

CHAPTER XIX.

There is something solemn and awe-inspiring in perfect happiness.

How many times in the day did Ida pull up Rupert and gaze into the distance with vacant, unseeing eyes, pause in the middle of some common task, look up from the book she was trying to read, to ask herself whether she was indeed the same girl who had lived her lonely life at Herondale, or whether she had changed places with some other personality, with some girl singularly blessed amongst women.

Jessie and Jason, even the bovine William, who was reputed the stupidest man in the dale, noticed the change in her, noticed the touch of colour that was so quick to mount to the ivory cheek, the novel brightness and tenderness in the deep grey eyes, the new note, the low, sweet tone of happiness in the clear voice. Her father only remained un.o.bservant of the subtle change, but he was like a mole burrowing amongst his book and gloating secretly over the box which he concealed at the approach of footsteps, the opening of a door, and the sound of a voice in a distant part of the house.

But though the servants remarked the change in their beloved mistress, they did not guess at its cause; for, by chance rather than design, none of them had seen Ida and Stafford together. And yet they met daily. Sometimes Stafford would ride over from Brae Wood and meet her by the river. There was a hollow there, so deep that it hid not only themselves but the horses, and here they would sit, hand in hand, or more often with his arm round her and her small, shapely head with its soft, but roughened hair, upon his breast. Sometimes he would row across the lake and they would walk side by side along the bank, and screened by the trees in which the linnet and the thrush sang the songs which make a lover's litany; at others--and these were the sweetest meeting of all, for they came in the soft and stilly night when all nature was hushed as if under the spell of the one great pa.s.sion--he would ride or walk over after dinner, and they would sit in the ruined archway of the old chapel and talk of their blank past, the magic present, and the future which was to hold nothing but happiness.

Love grows fast under such conditions, and the love of these two mortals grew to gigantic proportions, absorbing the lives of both of them. To Stafford, all the hours that were not spent with this girl of his heart were so much dreary waste.

To Ida--ah, well, who shall measure the intensity of a girl's first pa.s.sion? She only lived in the expectation of seeing him, in his presence and the whispered words and caresses of his love; and, in his absence, in the memory of them. For her life meant just this man who had come and taken the heart from her bosom and enthroned his own in its place.

They told each other everything. Stafford knew the whole of her life before they met, all the little details of the daily routine of the Hall, and her management of the farm; and she learnt from him all that was going on at the great, splendid palace which in his modesty Sir Stephen Orme had called the Villa. She liked to nestle against him and hear the small details of his life, as he liked to hear hers; and she seemed to know all the visitors at the Villa, and their peculiarities, as well as if she were personally acquainted with them.

"You ought not to leave them so much, Stafford." she said, with mock reproof, as they sat one afternoon in the ballow by the river. "Don't you think they notice your absence and wonder where you are?"

"Shouldn't think so," he replied. "Besides, I don't care if they do.

All my worry is that I can't come to you oftener. Every time I leave you I count up the hours that must pa.s.s before I see you again. But I expect most, if not all, of the visitors will be off presently. Most of 'em have been there the regulation fortnight; a good many come backwards and forwards; they're the city men, the money men. My father is closeted with them for hours every day--that big scheme of his seems to be coming off satisfactorily. It's a railway to some place in Africa, and all these fellows--the Griffenbergs, and Beltons, that fat German baron, Wirsch, and the rest of them, are in it. Heaven knows why my father wants to worry about it for. I heard one of them say that he calculated to make a million and a half out of it. As if he weren't rich enough!"

"A million and a half," she said. "What a large sum it seems. What one could do with a half, a quarter, a tenth of it!"

"What would you do, dearest?" he asked.

She laughed softly.

"I think that I would first buy you a present. And then I'd have the Hall repainted. No, I'd get the terrace rails and the portico mended; and yet, perhaps, it would be better to have the inside of the house painted and papered. You see, there are so many things I could do with it, that it's difficult to choose."

"You shall do 'em all," he said, putting his arm round her. "See here, Ida, I've been thinking about ourselves--"

"Do you ever think of anything else? I don't," she said, half unconsciously.

--"And I've made up my mind to take the bull by the horns--"

"Is that meant for my father or yours?"

"Both," he replied. "We've been so happy this last fortnight--is it a fortnight ago since I got you to tell me that you cared for me? Lord!

it seems a year sometimes, and at others it only seems a minute!--that we haven't cared to think of how we stand; but it can't like this forever, Ida. You see, I want you--I want you all to myself, for every hour of the day and night instead of for just the few minutes I've the good luck to s.n.a.t.c.h. Directly this affair of my governor's is finished I shall go to him and tell him I'm the happiest, the luckiest man in the world; I shall tell him everything exactly how we stand--and ask him to help us with your father."

Ida sighed and looked grave.

"I know, dearest," he said, answering the look. "But your father has to be faced some time, and I--Ida, I am impatient. I want you. Now, as I daresay you have discovered, I am rather an idiot than otherwise, and the worst man in the world to carry out anything diplomatically; but my father--" He laughed rather ruefully. "Well, they say he can coax a concession out of even the Sultan of Turkey; that there is no one who can resist him; and I know I shall be doing the right thing by telling him how we stand."

She leant her elbows on her knees and her chin in the palms of her hands.

"It shall be as you say, my lord and master," she said; "and when you tell him that you have been so foolish as to fall in love with a little Miss n.o.body, who lives in a ruined tumble-down house, and is as poor and friendless as a church mouse, do you think he will be delighted--that the great and all-powerful Sir Stephen Orme will throw up his hat for joy and consider that you have been very wise?"

"I think when he sees you--What is that?" he broke off.

"That" was a lady riding across the moor behind them. She was mounted on one of the Orme horses, was habited by Redfern, who had done justice to her superb and supple figure, and the sunlight which poured from between the clouds fully revealed the statuesque beauty of her face.

"I know," said Ida, quietly, as she looked at the graceful horsewoman, at the lithe, full figure, the cold perfection of the Grecian face.

"That is Miss Falconer: it is, is it not?"

He nodded indifferently.

"And she has seen us," said Ida.

"It doesn't matter in the least," said Stafford. "Why shouldn't she?

But I don't think she has; she did not turn her head as she rode by."

"That is why," said Ida, with her woman's acuteness. "She saw us from the top of the hill--see, the groom is just riding down."

She was silent a moment or two, watching Maude Falconer as she cantered away, then she shivered as if with cold.

"What is the matter, dearest?" he asked, drawing her to him. "Why did you shudder?"

She tried to laugh, but her eyes were grave and almost solemn. "I don't know. It was as if someone had walked over my grave; as if I felt the presentiment of some coming evil. I never felt like it before--Yes: she is very beautiful, Stafford. She is like a picture, a statue--no, that is not fair; for no picture had ever such magnificent hair, no statue was ever so full of life and--Oh, I want a word--power. Yes; she is like a tigress--a tigress asleep and in a good temper just for the present; but--"

Stafford laughed, the strong and healthy man's laugh of good-natured tolerance for the fancies of the woman he loves.

"My dear Ida, I a.s.sure you Miss Falconer is quite an ordinary young woman with nothing mysterious or uncanny about her. And if she has seen us, I am rather glad. I--well, I want to take you by the hand and exclaim aloud to the whole world: 'Behold the treasure I have found!

Look upon her--but shade your eyes lest her beauty dazzle you--and worship at her feet.' Only a day or two more and I'll tell my father and have him on our side."

She made a gesture of consent.

"It shall be as you will," she murmured again. "But go now, dearest; I shall have to ride fast to reach home in time to give my father his tea."

Maude Falconer cantered easily until she had turned the corner of the hill and was out of sight of Stafford and Ida, then she pulled up the high-bred horse who fretted under her steel-like hands and tossed the foam from his champing lips, pulled up and looked straight before her, while the colour came and went on her smooth cheek; a sombre fire gleamed in the usually coldly calm eyes, and her bosom heaved under the perfect moulding of the riding-habit. She sat and looked before her for a moment or two as if she were battling with an emotion which threatened to master her and to find expression in some violent outburst; but she conquered, and presently rode on to the Villa; and half an hour later Stafford, coming up the steps, found her lying back in her favourite chair with a cup of tea in her hand.

"You are just in time," she said, looking up at him, and he looked back at her rather vacantly; for Ida had been in his arms too recently, for his mind, his whole being, to be sufficiently clear of her to permit him to take any interest in anything else "for tea," she said. "Here it comes. Shall I pour it out for you? Have you been riding far?"

"Not very far," he said. "You have been riding, too. Is it a wonder we did not meet."

"Yes," she a.s.sented, languidly. "I met no one, saw no one, while I was out. Here comes your shadow," she added, as Tiny, having heard his beloved master's voice, came helter-skelter, head over heels, and leapt on Stafford's lap. "How fond he is of you."