At Love's Cost

A shout awoke her from her reverie; and looking up she saw the missing

steer forcing its way through a hedge on top of a bank. Stafford was

riding after it at an easy canter and coming straight for the bank. The

steer plunged through the hedge and floundered through the wide ditch,

and Ida headed it and drove it towards the rest of the herd. Then she

turned in her saddle to warn Stafford of the ditch; but as she turned

he was close upon the bank, and she saw the big hunter rise for the

leap.

A doubt as to how he would land rose in her mind, and she swung Rupert

round; and as she did so, she saw the hunter crash through the hedge,

stumble at the ditch, and fall, lurching forward, on its edge.

No man alive could have kept his seat, and Stafford came off like a

stone thrown from a catapult, and lay, face downwards, in the long, wet

grass.

Something like a hot iron shot through Ida's heart, and sent her face

white, and she rode up to him and flung herself from Rupert and knelt

beside the prostrate form.

He lay quite still; and she knew quite well what had happened: that he

had fallen on his head and stunned himself.

She remembered, at that moment, that she herself had once so fallen;

but the remembrance did nothing to soften her present anxiety. She

knelt beside him and lifted his head on her knee, and his white face

smote her accusingly. He was still, motionless so long that she began

to fear--was he dead? She asked herself the question with a heavy

pulsation of the heart, with a sense of irrevocable loss. If he was

dead, then--then--what had she lost!

Trembling in every limb, she laid her hand upon his heart. It beat, but

slowly, reluctantly. She looked round her with a sense of helplessness.

She had never been placed in such a position before. Not far from her

was a mountain rill, and she ran to it with unsteady steps and soaked

her handkerchief in it, and bathed the white, smooth forehead.

Even at that moment she noticed, half unconsciously, the clear-cut,

patrician features, the delicate lines of the handsome face.

He had come to this mishap in his attempt to help her. He was dying,

perhaps, in her service. A thrill ran through her, a thrill that moved

her as by an uncontrollable impulse to bend still lower over him so

that her lips almost touched his unconscious ones. Their nearness, the

intent gaze of her eyes, now dark as violets, seemed to make themselves

felt by him, seemed by some mysterious power to call him back from the

shadow-land of unconsciousness. He moved and opened his eyes.