“Miss Heron, my mother says that you have some thought of leaving Herondale, of going abroad.  If that is so, I cannot let you go without—­without my speaking to you; so I have come over this afternoon to tell you, as well as I can, what I have on my mind and my heart.  I’m not very good at expressing myself, and I’m handicapped in the present instance by—­by the depth of my feeling.  Of course I’m trying to tell you that I love you.  I thought you might have seen it,” he said, with a touch of wonder at her start and flush of surprise.  “But I see you have not noticed it.  I love you very much indeed; and I feel that my only chance of happiness lies in my winning you for my wife.  I don’t know there’s any more to be said than that, if I were to talk for a month.  I love you, and have loved you for a long time past.”  A few weeks, a few months are “a long time” to youth when it is in love!  “The very first day I saw you—­but I needn’t tell you that, only I like you to know that it isn’t a sudden fancy, and one that I shall get over in a hurry.  I don’t feel as though I shall ever get over it at all; I don’t know that I want to.  Please don’t speak for a moment.  There was something else I wanted to say.  I’d got it all arranged as I came along, but the sight of you has scattered it.”

Ida had been going to speak, to stop him; but at this appeal she remained silent, standing with her hands closing and unclosing on her whip, her eyes fixed on the ground, her brows drawn straight.  The coldest woman cannot listen unmoved to a declaration of love, and Ida was anything but cold.

“I only wanted to tell you,” he went on, “that my people are very anxious that you should say ‘yes.’  Both my father and mother are very fond of you—­I think you know that and—­” he stammered a little here for the first time—­“and—­well, there are the estates.  You won’t mind my saying that both you and I have to think of them; they belong to us and we belong to them, and—­if we were married—­But I don’t lay much stress upon the estates being so close.  I’d come and ask you to marry me if I were as poor as a church mouse or you hadn’t a penny.  It just comes to this:  that I love you with all my heart and soul, that if you’ll marry me I shall be the happiest man, and my people the proudest people, in England.”

There was a warm flush on his handsome face, an eager look in his bright eyes, and he had pleaded his cause very well, in an outspoken, manly way, which never fails to appeal to a woman.  Ida was moved; the crop nearly snapped in her hands, and her eyes grew moist.  He saw it, and tried to take her hand, but she, though she did not move, shook her head very gently but very resolutely.

“No,” she said, in a low voice, “I—­I want to tell you, Lord Edwin, how proud I am at the honour you have paid me.  Like yourself, I am not good at expressing my feelings—­though, indeed, I think you have done yourself an injustice:  you have spoken, told me very well—­and I am very grateful.  I wish I could say ‘yes.’”