"Oh, Stafford, do you think I don't know that you risked your life, as plainly as if I had been told, as if I had been there!" she said, her eyes glowing, her breath coming faster.
Stafford coloured and turned away from the subject.
"It was a large sum, and Mr. Joffler—that is the name of the owner of Salisbury Plain—advised me to invest it in a run of my own: there was enough to buy a large and important one. I went down to Melbourne to see the agents, and—is there no such thing as fate, or chance, Ida! Indeed there is!—as I was walking down one of the streets, I heard my name spoken. I turned and saw the stableman from the Woodman Inn, Mr. Groves's man—"
"Henry," murmured Ida, enviously: for had he not met her lover!
"Yes. He was surprised, but I think glad, to see me; and we went to a hotel and talked. For some time I couldn't bring myself to speak your name: you see, dearest, it had lived in my heart so long, and I had only whispered it to the stars, and in the solitary places, that I—I shrank from uttering it aloud," he explained with masculine simplicity.
Ida's eyes filled with tears and she nestled closer to him.
"At last I asked after the people, and nervously mentioned the Hall and—and 'Miss Ida.' Then the man told me."
His voice grew lower and he laid his hand on her head and stroked her hair soothingly, pityingly.
"He told me that your father was dead, had died suddenly, and worse—for it was worse to me dearest—that you had been left poor, and well-nigh penniless."
She sighed, but as one who sighs, looking back at a sorrow which has passed long ago and is swallowed up in present joy.