misery is as keen, yes, keener
than yours. For we are so helpless, so shackled; we have nothing else
to do but think, think, think! Go on, dearest! I seem to see you
there!"

"Thank God! you could not!" he said, huskily. "The black fit passed for
a time, and I settled down to work again. One day there was an attack
upon the farm by the blacks, as they are called. I was fortunately at
home, and we managed to beat them off and save the stock. It was a
valuable one and my employer, thinking too highly of my services, made
me a present of half the value. It was a generous gift, a lavish one,
and altogether uncalled for--"

"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.

"I asked him where you were, and when he told me that you had left the
Hall, and that it was said you--you were working for a livelihood, that
you were in poverty, I--dearest, I f