At Love's Cost

"Thank you very much," said Stafford.

Calling the dogs, she turned away; then, fortunately, Stafford

remembered the case of instruments.

"Oh, I beg your pardon!" he said; "I forgot this wallet. I found it by

the stream after you had gone."

"Oh, my wallet!" she cried. "I am so glad you have found it. I don't

know what I should have done if you had not; I should have had to send

to Preston or to London; and, besides, it was a present from the old

veterinary surgeon; he left it to me. There were some beautiful

instruments in it."

Still smiling, she opened it, as if to show him. Stafford drew near, so

near as to become conscious of the perfume of the rose in her bosom, of

the still fainter but more exquisite perfume of her hair. He bent over

the case in silence, and while they were looking a cloud sailed across

the moon.

The sudden disappearance of the light roused her, as it were, to a

sense of his presence.

"Thank you for bringing it to me," she said; "it was very good of you."

"Oh, I hadn't to bring it far," said Stafford. "I am staying at The

Woodman Inn, at Carysford."

"Oh," she said; "you are a tourist--you are fishing?"

Stafford could not bring himself to say that he was the son of the man

who had built the great white house, which, no doubt, her father and

she resented.

"You have a very beautiful place here," he said, after a pause.

She turned and looked at the house in the dim light, with a touch of

pride in her dreamy eyes.

"Yes," she said, as if it were useless to deny the fact.

"It is very old, and I ma very fond--"

She stopped suddenly, her lips apart, her eyes fixed on the farther end

of the terrace; for while she had been speaking a figure, only just

perceptible in the semi-darkness, had moved slowly across the end of

the terrace, paused for a moment at the head of the flight of steps,

and then slowly descended.

Stafford also saw it, and glancing at her he saw that she was startled,

if not frightened. She scarcely seemed to breathe, and she turned her

large, dark eyes upon him questioningly, somewhat appealingly.

"What is that?" she said, in a whisper, more to herself than to him.

"Someone--a man has gone down the steps from the house," he said.

"Don't you know who it is?"