A saint would have turned on such provocation; and Ida, being no saint, felt that her face was as crimson as the other girl's, and grew as hot of heart as of face. She set her lips tightly and tried to remain silent: surely it would be better, in every way better, to ride on without a word. But it was more than she could do: and she drew herself up and her eyes flashed back the challenge, as she said in a low but distinct voice:

"Pardon me, but you are mistaken. The land on which I am riding belongs to me." Maude grew pale again, and her lips set closely until the line of red almost disappeared.

"Is this not, then, part of the Villa estate?" she asked.

"No; it is part of the Herondale estate," replied Ida, rather more gently: for was it not horrible that she should be engaged in altercation with Stafford's future wife?

"Then I presume I have the honour of speaking to Miss Heron," said Maude, with an indefinable air, combining contempt and defiance, which brought the colour to Ida's face again.

"My name is Ida Heron; yes," she said.

"Then, if you are making no mistake, it is I who am trespa.s.sing," said Maude, "and it is I who must apologise. Pray consider that I do so most fully, Miss Heron."

"No apology is necessary," said Ida, still more gently. "You are quite welcome to ride over this or any part of Herondale."

Maude gave a little scornful laugh.

"Thanks, it's very good of you!" she said, haughtily, and with that covert offensiveness of which, alas! a woman alone is capable. "I do not think I shall have any desire to avail myself of your kind permission; the public roads and the land belonging to my father's house will, I think, prove quite sufficient for me. I am the daughter of Mr. Falconer, of the Villa at Brae Wood."

Ida inclined her head slightly by way of acknowledgment and adieu, and without another word rode on towards the gate at the bottom of the field which opened on to the road. Adonis who had been delighted to meet his old friend, promptly followed; and, though Maude Falconer tried her hardest to check him and turn him, he, inwardly laughing at her efforts, trotted cheerfully beside Rupert, and continued their conversation. Maude was half mad with mortification, and, quite unable to leave Ida's hated side, she raised her whip and struck Adonis across the face. The horse, who had never received such a blow before in his life, stopped dead short, falling back almost on to his haunches, then reared straight up and in a moment of temper tried to throw her off; indeed, she must have fallen but Ida, always cool at such moments, swept sideways, caught Adonis's bridle and brought him on all fours.

Maude was instantly jerked forward on to the horse's neck in a humiliating fashion, but recovering her seat, sat trembling with pa.s.sion.

It was impossible not to pity her, and Ida in her gentlest and quietest of voices, said: "I will wait here, will not go through the gate until your groom comes up. Your horse will be quite quiet then. If I might venture to say so, I think it would be wise not to strike him across the head; very few horses can stand it; and this one is high-bred and exceptionally spirited--"

She was stopped by Maude's scornful laugh.

"Really, I ought to feel very much obliged to you, Miss Heron!" she said; "and my sense of obligation is almost as great as my amazement at your frankness--and a.s.surance! May I ask you to be good enough to release my horse's reins?"

Ida's hand fell from the reins, and her face grew crimson; but before she could have retorted, even if she had intended doing so, Maude struck the horse again; it turned and dashed across the field, kicking and plunging violently, with Maude swaying perilously in the saddle.

Ida waited until the groom--it was Pottinger--had gained his mistress's side and got hold of the horse; then, with no thought of bravado but simply with the desire to get away from the spot, she put Rupert at the gate and leapt into the road.

CHAPTER XL.

Ida rode home all quivering with the pain of her meeting with Maude Falconer. At first it seemed to her that she must leave Herondale--for a time, at any rate; that it would be impossible for her to run the risk of meeting the beautiful woman who had stolen Stafford from her; but, as she grew calmer, her pride came to her aid, and she saw that to run away would be cowardly. Herondale was her home, had been her home long before the Villa had sprung up, and to desert it because of the proximity of Maude Falconer would be almost as bad as if a soldier should desert his colors.

But for the next few days she did not leave her own grounds. She grew pale and listless, and Lady Bannerdale, when she came to look her up, noticed the change in her, but was too tactful to make any remark upon it.

"We have missed you so much, my dear," she said, affectionately.

"Indeed, my husband has been quite fidgety and irritable--so unlike him!--and Edwin has been worse, if it were possible. Men are a great trouble, my dear Ida. Though perhaps I ought not to say that of mine, for I count myself lucky in both husband and son. Edwin has scarcely given me a day's trouble since he was a child. I really think, if I were asked what are the best gifts bestowed by the fairy G.o.dmother, I should say 'a good digestion and a temper to match,' and I am quite proud of Edwin's strength and amiability. But even he has been somewhat of a trial for the last few days; so, my dear girl, do come over and help me manage them."

Ida smiled rather absently, and her ladyship glided smoothly from the subject.

"Since we last saw you we have called at the Villa," she said, "and we were fortunate enough to find Miss Falconer at home. She is alone there in that huge palace of a place, for her father has gone back to London; and, though I was never very much taken with her, I could not help pitying her."

"Why?" asked Ida, not absently now, but in her quiet, reserved manner.

"She looks so--well, actually so unhappy," replied Lady Bannerdale.

"She was in mourning, and her face--she is really an extremely beautiful girl!--was like marble. And her reception of me was almost as cold. I am afraid that she has had more trouble than we are aware of, there was such a preoccupied and indifferent air about her. It occurred to me that she was fretting for her absent _fiance_, Mr. Stafford--oh, dear me! I shall never remember to call him Lord Highcliffe!--and I resolved to carefully refrain from mentioning him; but you know how stupid one is in such a case, how one always talks about lameness in the presence of a man with one leg; and in the midst of a pause in the conversation, which, by the way, was nearly all on my side, I blurted out with: 'Have you heard from Mr. Stafford Orme lately, Miss Falconer?' 'I suppose you mean Lord Highcliffe, Lady Bannerdale?' she said, turning her cold, blue eyes on my scarlet face. 'He is in Australia, and is well. I do not hear very often from him. He is leading a very busy life, and has little time for letter-writing, I imagine.' Of course I got myself away as soon as I could after that, and I'm afraid I left a very bad impression upon Miss Falconer."

Ida said nothing, but leant forward and stirred the fire, which may have caused the colour which glowed for a moment or two on her face.

"I am sure I don't know why the young man should have rushed off to the other end of the world: or why he doesn't rush back again and marry the lady of his heart, who has enough money for both of them, and would make an extremely handsome and stately countess. By the way, have you ever seen the present Lord Highcliffe, my dear?" "Yes, I have seen him," Ida replied in the tone which closes a subject of conversation.

"Shall I give you some more tea? No? Would you like to see how the workmen are getting on? I think they are working very quickly. They will want this part of the house presently, and I have an idea of going away for a time; perhaps abroad," she added, though she had put the idea away from her until this moment, and it was only Lady Bannerdale's talk of Maude Falconer which started it again in her mind.

Lady Bannerdale, looked alarmed.

"Oh, don't do that, my dear!" she said. "If you are obliged to turn out of the house, why not come to us? It would be so kind and sweet of you."

Ida sighed a little wearily.

"Oh, I don't suppose they will insist upon ejecting me," she said. "I think I can persuade them to leave me two or three rooms."

Lady Bannerdale went home and dropped her bomb-sh.e.l.l in the presence of Lord Bannerdale and Edwin.

"Ida rather thinks of going abroad," she said in a casual way at the dinner table.

Lord Edwin was raising his wine gla.s.s to his lips, but arrested it half-way and set it down again; and his handsome face grew long and grave.

"Oh! We shall miss her," remarked Lord Bannerdale, lamely, and avoiding looking in his son's direction.

Not another word was said; but the next day Lord Edwin came into Lady Bannerdale's room with that affectation of ease and indifference which never yet deceived a mother.

"I'm going to call on Miss Heron, mother," he said. "Any message?"

Lady Bannerdale looked at him, her brow wrinkled with motherly anxiety.

There was nothing in the world she desired more than his happiness; and she knew that the marriage with Ida would be in every way desirable: the girl was one in a thousand, the Bannerdale estates almost joined Herondale; both she and her husband were fond of Ida, who, they knew, would prove a worthy successor to the present mistress of the Grange; but just because it seemed so desirable and Lord Edwin's heart was so pa.s.sionately set upon it, the mother was anxious. She saw that he was dressed with extreme care, and that his face was unusually grave.

"You will give Ida my love, Edwin, please, and tell her--" She turned away that he might not see her anxiety. "That is all; but it means a great deal, as you know, Edwin. I--I wish you every happiness, my dear boy!"

"Thank you, mother," he said, by no means in an unmanly way. "My happiness or unhappiness rests with her."

When he arrived at the Hall, Ida was just going out for a ride. She turned back with him to the drawing-room, thinking that he had brought a message from his mother, probably a definite invitation to stay at the Grange, and in her mind she had already decided to decline it. As he happened to stand with his back to the window the gravity of his face did not enlighten her; and with something like a start she received his first words.

"Miss Heron, my mother says that you have some thought of leaving Herondale, of going abroad. If that is so, I cannot let you go without--without my speaking to you; so I have come over this afternoon to tell you, as well as I can, what I have on my mind and my heart. I'm not very good at expressing myself, and I'm handicapped in the present instance by--by the depth of my feeling. Of course I'm trying to tell you that I love you. I thought you might have seen it," he said, with a touch of wonder at her start and flush of surprise. "But I see you have not noticed it. I love you very much indeed; and I feel that my only chance of happiness lies in my winning you for my wife. I don't know there's any more to be said than that, if I were to talk for a month. I love you, and have loved you for a long time past." A few weeks, a few months are "a long time" to youth when it is in love! "The very first day I saw you--but I needn't tell you that, only I like you to know that it isn't a sudden fancy, and one that I shall get over in a hurry.

I don't feel as though I shall ever get over it at all; I don't know that I want to. Please don't speak for a moment. There was something else I wanted to say. I'd got it all arranged as I came along, but the sight of you has scattered it."

Ida had been going to speak, to stop him; but at this appeal she remained silent, standing with her hands closing and unclosing on her whip, her eyes fixed on the ground, her brows drawn straight. The coldest woman cannot listen unmoved to a declaration of love, and Ida was anything but cold.

"I only wanted to tell you," he went on, "that my people are very anxious that you should say 'yes.' Both my father and mother are very fond of you--I think you know that and--" he stammered a little here for the first time--"and--well, there are the estates. You won't mind my saying that both you and I have to think of them; they belong to us and we belong to them, and--if we were married--But I don't lay much stress upon the estates being so close. I'd come and ask you to marry me if I were as poor as a church mouse or you hadn't a penny. It just comes to this: that I love you with all my heart and soul, that if you'll marry me I shall be the happiest man, and my people the proudest people, in England."

There was a warm flush on his handsome face, an eager look in his bright eyes, and he had pleaded his cause very well, in an outspoken, manly way, which never fails to appeal to a woman. Ida was moved; the crop nearly snapped in her hands, and her eyes grew moist. He saw it, and tried to take her hand, but she, though she did not move, shook her head very gently but very resolutely.

"No," she said, in a low voice, "I--I want to tell you, Lord Edwin, how proud I am at the honour you have paid me. Like yourself, I am not good at expressing my feelings--though, indeed, I think you have done yourself an injustice: you have spoken, told me very well--and I am very grateful. I wish I could say 'yes.'"