“It does not matter,” she said; “you were very kind in helping me with the lamb; and I ought to have told you that my father would be very glad if you would fish in the Heron; you will find some better trout higher up the valley.”

“Thank you very much,” said Stafford.

Calling the dogs, she turned away; then, fortunately, Stafford remembered the case of instruments.

“Oh, I beg your pardon!” he said; “I forgot this wallet.  I found it by the stream after you had gone.”

“Oh, my wallet!” she cried.  “I am so glad you have found it.  I don’t know what I should have done if you had not; I should have had to send to Preston or to London; and, besides, it was a present from the old veterinary surgeon; he left it to me.  There were some beautiful instruments in it.”

Still smiling, she opened it, as if to show him.  Stafford drew near, so near as to become conscious of the perfume of the rose in her bosom, of the still fainter but more exquisite perfume of her hair.  He bent over the case in silence, and while they were looking a cloud sailed across the moon.

The sudden disappearance of the light roused her, as it were, to a sense of his presence.

“Thank you for bringing it to me,” she said; “it was very good of you.”

“Oh, I hadn’t to bring it far,” said Stafford.  “I am staying at The Woodman Inn, at Carysford.”

“Oh,” she said; “you are a tourist—­you are fishing?”

Stafford could not bring himself to say that he was the son of the man who had built the great white house, which, no doubt, her father and she resented.

“You have a very beautiful place here,” he said, after a pause.

She turned and looked at the house in the dim light, with a touch of pride in her dreamy eyes.

“Yes,” she said, as if it were useless to deny the fact.

“It is very old, and I ma very fond—­”

She stopped suddenly, her lips apart, her eyes fixed on the farther end of the terrace; for while she had been speaking a figure, only just perceptible in the semi-darkness, had moved slowly across the end of the terrace, paused for a moment at the head of the flight of steps, and then slowly descended.

Stafford also saw it, and glancing at her he saw that she was startled, if not frightened.  She scarcely seemed to breathe, and she turned her large, dark eyes upon him questioningly, somewhat appealingly.

“What is that?” she said, in a whisper, more to herself than to him.

“Someone—­a man has gone down the steps from the house,” he said.  “Don’t you know who it is?”

“No,” she replied in as low a voice.  “It is not Jason—­there is no one else—­who can it be?  I will go and see.”

She moved towards the terrace, and Stafford said: 

“I will come with you; you will let me?”