Stafford coloured and turned away from the subject.

“It was a large sum, and Mr. Joffler—­that is the name of the owner of Salisbury Plain—­advised me to invest it in a run of my own:  there was enough to buy a large and important one.  I went down to Melbourne to see the agents, and—­is there no such thing as fate, or chance, Ida!  Indeed there is!—­as I was walking down one of the streets, I heard my name spoken.  I turned and saw the stableman from the Woodman Inn, Mr. Groves’s man—­”

“Henry,” murmured Ida, enviously:  for had he not met her lover!

“Yes.  He was surprised, but I think glad, to see me; and we went to a hotel and talked.  For some time I couldn’t bring myself to speak your name:  you see, dearest, it had lived in my heart so long, and I had only whispered it to the stars, and in the solitary places, that I—­I shrank from uttering it aloud,” he explained with masculine simplicity.

Ida’s eyes filled with tears and she nestled closer to him.

“At last I asked after the people, and nervously mentioned the Hall and—­and ‘Miss Ida.’  Then the man told me.”

His voice grew lower and he laid his hand on her head and stroked her hair soothingly, pityingly.

“He told me that your father was dead, had died suddenly, and worse—­for it was worse to me dearest—­that you had been left poor, and well-nigh penniless.”

She sighed, but as one who sighs, looking back at a sorrow which has passed long ago and is swallowed up in present joy.

“I asked him where you were, and when he told me that you had left the Hall, and that it was said you—­you were working for a livelihood, that you were in poverty, I—­dearest, I felt as if I should go mad.  Think of it!  There was I, all those thousands of miles away, with all that money in my possession, and you, the queen of my heart, the girl I loved better than life itself, in poverty and perhaps wanting a friend!” He was silent a moment, and Ida felt him shudder as if he were again tasting the bitterness of that moment.

“When I had taken my passage,” he went on, succinctly, “I sent Henry up to the run to fill my place, and with him a letter to explain my sudden departure; and the next day, Heaven being kind to me—­I should have gone out of my mind if I had had to wait—­we sailed.  I stood at the bow, with my face turned towards England, and counted the days before I could get there and begin my search for you.”

“And you came here, Stafford, first?” she said, to lead him on:  for what an unspeakable bliss it was to listen to him!