“Ah, say it!” he implored her, eagerly.

She shook her head again, and lifting her eyes and looking at him straightly but sadly, she said in a still lower voice: 

“Lord Edwin, I do not love you.”

“I never said, thought, you did,” he responded, promptly.  “Why, you’ve only known me such a short time, and I’m not such a conceited bounder to think that you’ve fallen in love with me already.  I only want you to let me try and win your love; and—­I think I shall do so,” he said in a modest but manly way, which would at once have won Ida’s heart—­if it had not been won already.  “If you will only give me some hope, just tell me that I’ve a chance, that you’ll let me, try—­”

Ida smiled a sad little smile.

“If I said as much as that—­But I cannot.  Lord Edwin, you—­you have told me that you love me, and it would not be fair—­ah, please don’t try to persuade me!  Don’t you see how terrible it would be if I were to let you think that I might come to care for you, and I did not do so.”

“For God’s sake, don’t say ‘no,’” broke from him, and his face paled under the tan.

She turned away from him, her eyes full of tears which she dared not let him see.

“I—­I must have time,” she said, almost desperately.  “Will you give me a day, two days?” she asked, quite humbly.  “I want to do what you want, but—­I want to think:  there is something I should have to tell you.”

He flushed to the roots of his hair.

“If it’s anything that’s happened in the past, anyone else—­of course, loving you as I do, I have seen that there has been something on your mind, some trouble besides your father’s death—­but if it is past, I don’t mind.  I know I can teach you to forget it, whatever it is.  Ida, trust yourself to me.”

She drew away from him.

“Give me two days,” she said, with a catch in her breath.

He caught at the hope, small though it was.

“I will give you two days, twenty if you like,” he said.  “Only, while you are thinking it over, remember I love you with all my heart and soul, that my people will love you as a daughter, that—­Oh, I won’t say any more:  I can’t trust myself!  I’ll go now.”

When he had gone Ida got on Rupert and rode to the top of the hill.  There she pulled up and thought with all her heart and mind.  She could not doubt his love; she could not but feel that if she surrendered herself to him he would, indeed, in time teach her to forget.  She knew that it was her duty to marry; his word about the estates had not been spoken in vain.  Yes; if she became Lord Edwin’s wife, she would in time forget.  But, alas! she did not want to forget.

Her love for Stafford was still as strong as ever, and with its bitterness was mingled a sweetness which was sweeter than life itself.  And yet how great a sin it was, how shameful a one, that she should love a man who was pledged to another woman, who was going to marry her!