"And you came here, Stafford, first?" she said, to lead him on: for
what an unspeakable bliss it was to listen to him!
"Yes; I knew that I should hear some tidings of you here. There would
be a lawyer, a steward, who would know. I little thought, hoped, to see
you yourself, Ida. I came from the station to-night to look at the old
place, to walk where we had walked, to stand where we had stood. I
stopped under the trees here and looked at the house, at the terrace
where I had seen you, watched for you. I could see that men had been at
work, and I thought that you had sold the place, that the new people
were altering it, and I cursed them in my heart; for every stone of it
is sacred to me. And then, as I stood looking, and asking myself where
you were, the dogs came. Even then it did not occur to me that you were
still here--at the Hall--and when I saw you--"
He stopped, and laughed shortly, as a man does when his emotion is
almost too much for him.
"I'd made up my mind what to write to you; but, you see, I'd had no
thought, no hope, of seeing you; and now--ah, well, it's hard to think
of anything, with you in my arms! But see here, Ida, there isn't any
need to say anything, is there? You'll come back with me to that new
world--"
What was it, what word in the tender, loving speech that, like a breath
of wind sweeping away a mountain mist, cleared the mist from her mind,
woke her from her strange, dream-like condition, recalled the past,
and, alas! and alas! the present!
With a low cry, a cry of anguish--one has heard it from the lips of a
sufferer waking from the anodyne of sleep to fresh pain--she tore
herself from his arms, and with both hands to her head, stood regarding
him, her face white, something like terror in her eyes.
"Ida!" he cried, rising and stretching out his hands to her.
She shrank back, putting out her hand as if to keep him off.
"Don't--don't come near me! Oh, how could I have forgotten!--how could
I! I must have been mad!"
She wrung her hands and bit her lips as if she were tortured by the
shame of it. His arms fell to his sides, and he stood and looked at her
with his teeth set.
"Ida, listen to me! I--I, too--had forgotten. It--it was the delight of
seeing you. But, dearest, what does the past matter? It _is_ past, I
have come back to you."