“A million and a half,” she said.  “What a large sum it seems.  What one could do with a half, a quarter, a tenth of it!”

“What would you do, dearest?” he asked.

She laughed softly.

“I think that I would first buy you a present.  And then I’d have the Hall repainted.  No, I’d get the terrace rails and the portico mended; and yet, perhaps, it would be better to have the inside of the house painted and papered.  You see, there are so many things I could do with it, that it’s difficult to choose.”

“You shall do ’em all,” he said, putting his arm round her.  “See here, Ida, I’ve been thinking about ourselves—­”

“Do you ever think of anything else?  I don’t,” she said, half unconsciously.

—­“And I’ve made up my mind to take the bull by the horns—­”

“Is that meant for my father or yours?”

“Both,” he replied.  “We’ve been so happy this last fortnight—­is it a fortnight ago since I got you to tell me that you cared for me?  Lord! it seems a year sometimes, and at others it only seems a minute!—­that we haven’t cared to think of how we stand; but it can’t like this forever, Ida.  You see, I want you—­I want you all to myself, for every hour of the day and night instead of for just the few minutes I’ve the good luck to snatch.  Directly this affair of my governor’s is finished I shall go to him and tell him I’m the happiest, the luckiest man in the world; I shall tell him everything exactly how we stand—­and ask him to help us with your father.”

Ida sighed and looked grave.

“I know, dearest,” he said, answering the look.  “But your father has to be faced some time, and I—­Ida, I am impatient.  I want you.  Now, as I daresay you have discovered, I am rather an idiot than otherwise, and the worst man in the world to carry out anything diplomatically; but my father—­” He laughed rather ruefully.  “Well, they say he can coax a concession out of even the Sultan of Turkey; that there is no one who can resist him; and I know I shall be doing the right thing by telling him how we stand.”

She leant her elbows on her knees and her chin in the palms of her hands.

“It shall be as you say, my lord and master,” she said; “and when you tell him that you have been so foolish as to fall in love with a little Miss Nobody, who lives in a ruined tumble-down house, and is as poor and friendless as a church mouse, do you think he will be delighted—­that the great and all-powerful Sir Stephen Orme will throw up his hat for joy and consider that you have been very wise?”

“I think when he sees you—­What is that?” he broke off.

“That” was a lady riding across the moor behind them.  She was mounted on one of the Orme horses, was habited by Redfern, who had done justice to her superb and supple figure, and the sunlight which poured from between the clouds fully revealed the statuesque beauty of her face.

“I know,” said Ida, quietly, as she looked at the graceful horsewoman, at the lithe, full figure, the cold perfection of the Grecian face.  “That is Miss Falconer:  it is, is it not?”