There is something solemn and awe-inspiring in perfect happiness.

How many times in the day did Ida pull up Rupert and gaze into the

distance with vacant, unseeing eyes, pause in the middle of some common

task, look up from the book she was trying to read, to ask herself

whether she was indeed the same girl who had lived her lonely life at

Herondale, or whether she had changed places with some other

personality, with some girl singularly blessed amongst women.

Jessie and Jason, even the bovine William, who was reputed the

stupidest man in the dale, noticed the change in her, noticed the touch

of colour that was so quick to mount to the ivory cheek, the novel

brightness and tenderness in the deep grey eyes, the new note, the low,

sweet tone of happiness in the clear voice. Her father only remained

unobservant of the subtle change, but he was like a mole burrowing

amongst his book and gloating secretly over the box which he concealed

at the approach of footsteps, the 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.




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