She laughed now as she pictured the scene that would be enacted.  But suddenly the laugh died on her lips, as there flashed across her mind the words Jessie had said.  Stafford was engaged to Maude Falconer, the girl up at the Villa, whose beauty and grace and wealth all the dale was talking of.

Oh, God!  Was there any truth in it, was there any truth in it?  Had Stafford, indeed, written that cruel letter?  Had he left her forever, forever, forever?  Should she never see him again, never again hear him tell her that he loved her, would always love her?

The room spun round with her, she suddenly felt sick and faint, and, reeling, caught at the carved mantel-shelf to prevent herself from falling.  Then gradually the death-like faintness passed, and she became conscious that her father’s voice was calling to her, and she clasped her head again and swept the hair from her forehead, and clenched her hands in the effort to gain her presence of mind and self-command.

She picked up the letter, and, with a shudder, thrust it in her bosom, as Cleopatra might have thrust the asp which was to destroy her; then with leaden feet, she crossed the hall and opened the library door, and saw her father standing by the table clutching some papers in one hand, and gesticulating wildly with the other.  Dizzily, for there seemed to be a mist before her eyes, she went to him and laid a hand upon his arm.

“What is it, father?” she said, “Are you ill?  What is the matter?”

He gazed at her vacantly and struck his hand on the table, after the manner of a child in a senseless passion.

“Lost!  Lost!  All lost!” he mumbled, jumbling the words together almost incoherently.

“What is lost, father?” she asked.

“Everything, everything!” he cried, in the same manner.  “I can’t remember, can’t remember!  It’s ruin, utter ruin!  My head—­I can’t think, can’t remember!  Lost, lost!”

In her terror, she put her young arm round him as a mother encircles her child in the delirium of fever.

“Try and tell me, father!” she implored him.  “Try and be calm, dearest!  Tell me, and I will help you.  What is lost?”

He tried to struggle from her arms, tried to push her from him.

“You know!” he mumbled.  “You’ve watched me—­you know the truth!  Everything is lost!  I am ruined!  The mortgage!  Herondale will pass away!  I am a poor man, a very poor man!  Have pity on me, have pity on me!”

He slipped, by their weight, from her arms and fell into the chair.  She sank on to her knees, her arms still round him, and stroked and caressed his withered hand that twitched and shook; and to her horror his stony eyes grew more vacant, his jaw dropped, and he sank still lower in the chair.  “Jessie!  Jason!” she called, and they rushed in.  For a space they stood aghast and unhelpful from fright, then Jason tried to lift his master from the heap into which he had collapsed.  The old man’s eyes closed, he straggled for breath, and when he had gained it, he looked from one to the other with a smile, a senile smile, which added to Ida’s grief and terror.