She came in late for dinner, and could scarcely eat.  Her reason said “yes,” her heart said “no:”  and she knew that she ought to listen to her reason and turn a deaf ear to the still voice in her heart.  She paced up and down the drawing-room, pale and wan with the fight that was going on within her.  Then suddenly she resolved that she would accept him.  She would not keep him in suspense:  it would not be fair—­it would be a cruel requital of his love and generosity.  She went to the writing-table, and hurriedly, as if she were afraid of hesitating, she drew a sheet of paper towards her and wrote: 

“Dear Lord Edwin—­” She had got thus far when Donald and Bess, who had been lying beside the fire, sprang up and ran to the door barking loudly.  She laid down the pen and opened the door mechanically; the moonlight was streaming through the window in the hall; the dogs bounded to the front door still barking vociferously.  Still, mechanically, she let them out, and they rushed across the terrace and over the lawn to the group of trees beside the footpath.  Thinking that they heard Jessie, whom she had sent to Bryndermere, Ida, half-unconsciously glad of the interruption, followed them slowly across the lawn.

Their barking ceased suddenly, and convinced that it was Jessie, she went on to add something to her message.  Then, suddenly, she saw a tall figure standing in the shadow of the trees.  It was a man, and Donald and Bess were jumping up at him with little whines of pleasure.  Smitten by a sudden fear she stopped; but the man raised his head and saw her, and, with an exclamation, strode towards her.  For an instant she thought that she was dreaming, that her imagination was playing her false, for it was Stafford’s form and face.  They stood and gazed at each other; her brain felt dizzy, her pale face grew paler; she knew that she was trembling, that she could scarcely stand; she began to sway to and fro slightly, and he caught her in his arms.

CHAPTER XLI.

She did not resist, but resigned herself to his embrace, as if he still had the right to take her in his arms, as if she still belonged to him.  She had been under a great, an indescribable strain for several hours, and his sudden presence, the look in his eyes, the touch of his hands, deprived her of the power of thought, of resistance.  To her and to him, at that moment, it was as if they had not been parted, as if the events of the last few months were only visionary.

With surrender in every fibre of her being she lay in his arms, her head upon his breast, her eyes closed, her heart throbbing wildly under the kisses which he pressed passionately upon her lips, her hair; the while he called upon her name, as if his lips hungered to pronounce it.

“Stafford!” she said, at last.  “It is really you!  When—­” Her voice died away, as if she were speaking in a dream, and her eyes closed with a little shudder of perfect joy and rest.