, yes," assented Stafford; "he is as quiet as a lamb; but he is
highly bred and as highly strung."

As they were starting, Pottinger murmured:

"Don't curb him too tightly, miss."

Maude ignored the warning; and she and Stafford rode out. The rain had
ceased, the clouds had passed away, and in the joy of his nearness, her
spirits rose, a feeling of triumph swelled in her bosom.

"How little I thought yesterday, even this morning, that we should be
riding side by side, Stafford," she said. "How little I thought I
should have you back again, my own, my very own! Don't all these months
you've been away seem like a dream to you? They do to me." She drew a
long breath. "Let us ride across the dale."

"You will find it wet there, had you not better keep to the road?"

"No, no," she said; "Adonis is dying for a gallop; see how he is
fretting."

Stafford looked at the horse curiously. He was champing his bit and
throwing up his head in a nervous, agitated manner which Stafford had
never seen him display before.

"I can't make the horse out," he said, more to himself than Maude.
"Perhaps he'll be all right after a gallop."

They crossed the road at a trot, which was an uneven one on Adonis's
part, and got on the moor. Maude, still in high spirit, still buoyed up
by her feeling of triumph, talked continuously; telling him some of the
London news, planning out their future. They would have a house in
London, Stafford should take his proper place in the world; they would
step back to the high position which was his by right, as a peer of the
realm. Stafford was scarcely listening. A question was haunting him, a
question which he could not thrust from him: he was going to marry
Maude Falconer, going to take the hard and stony road of duty which
Ida, in her noble way, had pointed out to him. Ought he not to tell
Maude about Ida and his broken engagement to her; would it not be
better for both of them, for all of them, if he were to do so? He would
have to tell her that he could not live at the Villa; she would want to
know the reason; would it not be better to tell her?

He raised his head to begin; when suddenly he saw, going up the hill in
front of them, a horse and horsewoman. She was walking up slowly, and,
long before her figure stood out against the clear sky, he saw that it
was Ida. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that his heart stood
still. That she should have appeared before him in his sight, at such a
mom