he 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 passion--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
passion? 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'