Stafford coloured and turned away from the subject.
"It was a large sum, and Mr. Joffler--that is the name of the owner of
Salisbury Plain--advised me to invest it in a run of my own: there was
enough to buy a large and important one. I went down to Melbourne to
see the agents, and--is there no such thing as fate, or chance, Ida!
Indeed there is!--as I was walking down one of the streets, I heard my
name spoken. I turned and saw the stableman from the Woodman Inn, Mr.
Groves's man--"
"Henry," murmured Ida, enviously: for had he not met her lover!
"Yes. He was surprised, but I think glad, to see me; and we went to a
hotel and talked. For some time I couldn't bring myself to speak your
name: you see, dearest, it had lived in my heart so long, and I had
only whispered it to the stars, and in the solitary places, that I--I
shrank from uttering it aloud," he explained with masculine simplicity.
Ida's eyes filled with tears and she nestled closer to him.
"At last I asked after the people, and nervously mentioned the Hall
and--and 'Miss Ida.' Then the man told me."
His voice grew lower and he laid his hand on her head and stroked her
hair soothingly, pityingly.
"He told me that your father was dead, had died suddenly, and worse--for
it was worse to me dearest--that you had been left poor, and well-nigh
penniless."
She sighed, but as one who sighs, looking back at a sorrow which has
passed long ago and is swallowed up in present joy.
"I asked him where you were, and when he told me that you had left the
Hall, and that it was said you--you were working for a livelihood, that
you were in poverty, I--dearest, I felt as if I should go mad. Think of
it! There was I, all those thousands of miles away, with all that money
in my possession, and you, the queen of my heart, the girl I loved
better than life itself, in poverty and perhaps wanting a friend!" He
was silent a moment, and Ida felt him shudder as if he were again
tasting the bitterness of that moment.
"When I had taken my passage," he went on, succinctly, "I sent Henry up
to the run to fill my place, and with him a letter to explain my sudden
departure; and the next day, Heaven being kind to me--I should have
gone out of my mind if I had had to wait--we sailed. I stood at the
bow, with my face turned towards England, and counted the days before I
could get there and begin my search for you."